World  Missions 


FROM 


The  Home  Base 


JOSEPH  ERNEST  McAFEE 


World  Missions  From 
the  Home  Base 

A  Group  of  Addresses  and  Papers 


By 
JOSEPH  ERNEST  McAFEE 

Author  of  "Missions  Striking  Home  " 


New  York  Chicago  Toronto 

Fleming     H.     Revell     Company 

London         and  Edinburgh 


Copyright,  1911,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  123  North  Wabash  Ave. 
Toronto:  25  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:      100    Princes    Street 


To 
A  Woman  I  know 

who  fulfills  a  heavenly  "  mission  " 
by  maintaining  the  "  home  base  " 


An  Introductory  Word 

There  is  much  repetition  in  this  little  book,— not 
so  much  of  language,  but  there  is  iteration  and  re- 
iteration of  certain  ideas.  I  believe  they  are  worth 
reiterating.  Small  as  the  book  is  none  will  care  to 
take  it  at  a  sitting.  The  style  of  platform  address  is 
retained  in  the  addresses.  Those  who  find  that  style 
unsatisfactory  for  reading  may  be  more  nearly  satis- 
fied with  the  papers  at  the  close.  The  volume  is  a 
companion  to  "Missions  Striking  Home,"  in  which 
emphasis  is  laid  upon  similar  and  collateral  ideas, 
set  forth  after  a  similar  manner.  Though  the  sections 
of  the  book  are  disjointed,  the  title  serves  more  or 
less  vitally  to  relate  the  parts. 

J.  E.  M. 

New  York  City. 


[7] 


Contents 


I.  The  American    People   in  the  Economy  of 

Grace  ..... 

II.  America's  Spiritual  Needs  and  Mission 

III.  What  is  Involved  in  the  Evangelization  of 

America    ..... 

IV.  What  the  Foreigner  is  Teaching  Us  . 

V.  The    Difference    Between   Facts  and   Prin 

ciples        ..... 

VI.  Home   Missions   and  Spiritual  World  Con 

quest        ..... 

VII.  Construction    and   Reconstruction — Crea 

tion  and  Redemption 

VIII.  "  The  Crisis  "  in  Missionary  Method 

IX.  Wanted — An  American  Church 


u 

22 

36 
52 

65 

78 

87 

96 

IIO 


[9] 


THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE  IN  THE  ECONOMY 
OF  GRACE 

God  is  not  a  respecter  of  persons.  Which  is  to 
say  that  His  preferences  are  not  capricious.  His 
choices  do  not  delimit  His  love.  They  rather  mag- 
nify His  love,  and  give  it  scope.  The  divine  choice 
of  the  American  people  is  not  arbitrary.  The  focal- 
izing tendencies  of  nineteenth  and  twentieth  cen- 
tury progress  have  unequivocally  marked  the  direc- 
tion of  the  divine  preferences ;  they  have  made 
clear  the  choice  of  this  people.  But  they  have  made 
equally  clear  the  supremely  rational  and  beneficent 
basis  of  that  choice.  Men  are  saved  to  serve ;  na- 
tions are  dedicated  by  the  will  of  God  to  the  fulfill- 
ment of  universal,  benign  purposes. 

The  physical  equipment  of  our  domain  for  the 
supreme  service  to  God's  world  is  not  the  least  emi- 
nent mark  of  the  divine  favour.  Considering  it  as  a 
laboratory,  the  divine  physicist  has  constructed  this 
room  upon  no  mean  dimensions.  Large  purposes 
must  be  modelled  on  broad  lines.  God  has  builded 
His  laboratory  large.  The  final  man  will  be  shack- 
led by  no  artificial  boundary  lines  ;  will  be  no  acci- 
dent of  a  locality  ;  will  be  no  puppet  of  prevailing 
wind  currents ;  will  be  no  creature  of  climates. 
Here,  therefore,  are  all  the  climates.  The  eternal 
ice  of  Alaska's  arctics  calls  down  the  meridians  to 
[11] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

the  eternal  bloom  of  Florida's  tropics,  they  and  all 
between  joining  compact  in  the  service  of  man. 

The  final  man  must  be  no  starveling.  Here,  there- 
fore, is  earth's  infinite  variety  of  fruits  of  soil  and 
water,  of  lofty  altitude  and  brackish  lowland.  Across 
this  vast  expanse  every  wind  sweeps,  every  zephyr 
floats,  toughening  the  fibre  of  every  wood,  putting 
sweetness  and  strength  into  every  flower  and  grain. 

No  one  race  may  claim  the  final  man.  To  pro- 
duce him  the  elements  must  gather  from  all  the 
races.  The  crime  of  Babel  must  be  stoned,  ere  God 
may  work  His  final  good  in  man,  for  man.  That 
atonement  is  here  being  wrought.  Here  the  races 
meet  to  epitomize  the  race.  Each  ship-load  brings 
its  element  to  contribute  to  the  ultimate  composite. 
From  the  ends  of  the  earth  they  come,  from  near 
and  far  :  Italian,  Bulgarian,  Bohemian,  Moravian, 
Croatian,  Slovenian,  Dalmatian,  Ruthenian,  Rou- 
manian, Norwegian,  Armenian  ;  East  Indian,  West 
Indian  ;  Lithuanian,  Herzogovinian,  Scandinavian  ; 
Russian,  Servian,  Syrian,  African,  Cuban,  Austrian ; 
Polish,  Turkish,  Irish,  Finnish,  Flemish,  English, 
Spanish,  Swedish,  Danish  ;  Chinese,  Portuguese, 
Japanese ;  Polak,  Slovak,  Russniak ;  French  and 
German,  Dutch  and  Welsh,  Magyar  and  Scotch, 
Korean  and  Montenegrin,  Greek  and  Hebrew.  And 
God  said,  Let  the  American  be !  He  scours  the 
antipodes  for  the  final  composite  of  His  laboratory  ; 
He  gathers  them  by  the  ship-load  :  the  fair,  the 
swarthy  ;  the  phlegmatic,  the  volatile ;  the  brusk, 
the  suave ;  the  energetic,  the  lethargic ;  the  prag- 
matist,  the  mystic  ;  the  idealist,  the  realist ;  the 
sage,  the  promoter ;  the  sentimentalist,  the  steel- 
[12] 


THE  AMEKICAN  PEOPLE 

nerved  ;  the  tender-hearted,  the  iron-willed  ;  the 
philosopher,  the  man  of  affairs.  Be  still  ;  the  Al- 
mighty is  at  labour  in  His  laboratory,  making  a 
man.  Babel  is  being  redeemed.  Humanity's  "  one 
flesh  "  is  being  revealed  that  all  may  through  the 
human  brotherhood  find  the  seal  of  the  divine 
Fatherhood.  Here  is  an  awesome  spectacle  :  God  in 
His  laboratory,  working  out  the  redeeming  proc- 
esses, by  which  in  the  large  and  through  all  the 
nations  men  are  to  come  into  their  universal  broth- 
erhood and  sonhood. 

I  specify  two  particulars  in  which  God  would 
fain  work  out  here  in  the  microcosm  His  macrocosm 
of  grace,  would  reveal  in  the  miniature  the  benign 
purposes  of  His  universal  economy. 

In  the  first  place,  men  are  growing  rich  here.  So, 
rich  the  world  round,  God  means  men  shall  become. 
The  knack  of  making  the  material  resource  of  air  and 
water  and  soil  and  rock  yield  in  an  hitherto  inconceiv- 
able fullness  to  the  wants  of  men  is  the  glory,  almost 
the  despair,  of  this  people.  With  like  store  God  has 
equipped  His  world,  the  nations  through  ;  and  such 
a  knack  of  getting  and  spending  shall  one  day  be  an 
universal  human  benison.  Here  is  a  plenty  to  min- 
ister to  all  those  human  desires  which  foolish  men 
have  sometimes  called  gross.  God  means  that  all 
shall  share  that  plenty  in  their  own  resources,  and 
learn,  through  the  very  abundance,  to  call  none  of 
His  gifts  common  or  unclean.  God  would  ennoble 
all  with  riches  that  none  may  be  prostituted  by  them. 
Our  ever-resourceful  Secretary  of  Agriculture  de- 
clares that  henceforth  a  crop  failure  in  the  United 
States  is  a  virtual  impossibility.  Every  season  is  a 
[13] 


WOELD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

record-breaker  in  some  crop  or  some  industry.  The 
so-called  natural  calamity,  this  people  has  learned,  is 
to  be  utilized,  not  supinely  bemoaned.  Nothing  is 
waste.  The  great  American  desert,  even  where  in 
restricted  areas  it  is  still  desert,  is  found  to  be  a  vast 
and  inexhaustible  storehouse  of  mineral  treasure. 
Yet  here  the  divine  Provider  has  not  been  more 
lavish  than  elsewhere  ;  He  is  only  seeking  here  to  cul- 
ture men  in  the  rudiments  of  His  ennobling  bounties. 

Here  men  are  crowding  into  cities.  Thus  they 
may  furnish  the  spiritual  currents  direct  and  un- 
broken circuit.  Of  the  four  largest  cities  in  the 
world,  two  are  already  in  this  domain  which  only 
yesterday  was  vast  unpeopled  wilderness.  Our  lux- 
urious cities  are  a  world-phenomenon.  The  very 
wealth  of  their  construction  is  an  expanding  factor 
in  the  progress  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  Some  think 
it  wise  to  say,  ' '  God  made  the  country  ;  man  made 
the  city."  For  my  own  part,  I  discover  scant  wis- 
dom in  the  saying,  and  only  a  blundering  insight. 
God  made  also  the  city  ;  made  it  last,  as  the  crown- 
ing demonstration  of  His  wisdom.  We  commit  dis- 
tressing folly  when  we  accept  the  increasing  urban 
pressure  of  our  civilization  as  in  itself  a  bane,  and 
supinely  endure  its  abortions  as  a  necessary  evil. 
The  City  of  God  is  His  final  boon  to  men.  If  man 
made  the  city,  God  taught  him  how  ;  and  it  will  be 
our  everlasting  disgrace  and  undoing  if  we  shall 
have  learned  that  lesson  so  ill  that  God's  best  gift 
shall  be  prostituted  to  the  ends  of  hellishness  and 
damnation. 

Our  incomparable  material  civilization,  its  over- 
flowing plenty,  its  teeming  cities,  its  throbbing  en- 

[14] 


THE  AMEKICAN  PEOPLE 

ergies,  its  knack  of  making  the  most  of  the  least, 
its  almost  magic  alchemy  by  which  peasant  is  trans- 
muted into  prince,  its  celerities  of  movement,  its 
stressful  zest  of  living,  its  fair  tragedies  of  achieve- 
ment, its  strains  of  industry  making  impossibili- 
ties actual  and  real, — all  these,  the  latest  and 
richest  evidences  of  God's  beneficence,  we, — shame 
on  us ! — mistake  for  evils  oftentimes,  and  discover 
our  utmost  spiritual  zeal  in  the  impotent  wail  over  an 
alleged  materialistic  age.  A  true  prophet  of  God 
must  swell  with  new  indignation  every  day  before  the 
spectacle  of  our  spiritual  indolence  and  cowardice. 
We  content  ourselves  with  deprecations  of  "mate- 
rialism," whatever  we  may  suppose  that  means, 
while  the  modern  city,  God's  latest  boon,  and  the 
mightiest  enginery  of  spiritual  forcefulness  ever  de- 
vised by  man  or  God,  is  converted  into  a  hell-hole 
before  our  eyes.  We  set  ourselves  forth  as  the  ad- 
ministrators of  the  spiritual  potencies— we  of  the 
church  do — lay  out  our  elaborate  plans  for  world- 
saving,  and  then  ignobly  balk  before  the  supreme 
test  of  our  spiritual  efficiency  ;  let  our  great  cities  go 
to  rot,  allow  their  vast  accumulations  of  soul-stuff 
to  suppurate,  while  we  moon  the  horizon,  and  im- 
potently  bewail  the  grossness  of  modern  commer- 
cialism !  I  trow  we  need  a  new  vision  of  God's 
eternal  purposes.  We  need  the  discernment  to  dis- 
cover the  elements  of  the  divine  redemption  under 
our  very  eyes.  We  drudgingly  travel  the  long  road 
of  grace,  and  then,  through  our  spiritual  blindness, 
convert  that  one-time  far-off  divine  event  towards 
which  the  whole  creation  has  moved  into  the  plague- 
hole  of  our  civilization. 

[15] 


WOELD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

Tut!  tut!  tut!  what  weakling  world -saviours  we 
do  be,  when  we  go  down  in  such  iguoble  impotence 
before  the  final  test  of  the  spiritual  efficiency  of 
our  scheme.  Here  is  that  which  has  cost  the  birth- 
throes  of  the  ages.  Can  we  redeem  our  American 
cities'?  Can  we  transfuse  the  forces  of  this  splendid 
American  civilization  with  the  spiritual  potencies 
of  the  kingdom  of  God  ?  That  is  the  end  for  which 
this  divine  laboratory  was  constructed.  God  and 
all  the  world  wait  to  witness  the  demonstration. 
We  toy  with  child's  trinkets  till  we  show  ourselves 
equal  to  that  task. 

In  the  second  place  I  nominate  as  the  world-re- 
deeming mission  of  this  people  the  bringing  of  men 
into  the  essential  democracy  of  the  commonwealth 
of  God.  The  Church  has  historically  been  affrighted 
at  political  contaminations  and  entanglements. 
Very  well,  let  it  be  so  still.  This  mission  of  which 
I  speak  lies  in  the  realm  of  the  spirit  and  far  tran- 
scends policies.  The  commonwealth  of  God  gains 
its  vitality  from  no  political  construction.  The  de- 
mocracy of  the  spirit  will  maintain  the  human 
brotherhood,  whatever  may  be  the  accidents  of  po- 
litical formularies-  Such  a  democracy  all  the  sanc- 
tions of  history  and  of  history's  God  have  commis- 
sioned this  people  to  produce  and  maintain.  It  is 
a  holy  mission.  The  enterprise  is  the  essence  of 
the  Gospel.  It  at  once  transcends  and  subsumes  all 
our  methods  of  administration  in  both  state  and 
church. 

The  church  of  a  class  can  never  be  the  Church  of 
Jesus  Christ.  And  any  church  which  permits  itself 
to  be  considered  the  society  of  a  class  has  committed 
[16] 


THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

a  terrible  blunder.  An  organized  system  of  patron- 
age is  a  poor  travesty  upon  a  church.  The  common 
people,  who  heard  Jesus  gladly,  were  not  pleased  to 
have  Him  reach  down,  away  down,  pat  them  com- 
placently upon  the  back,  and  tell  them  to  be  good, 
or  to  be  warmed  and  fed.  He  never  indulged  such  a 
mockery.  He  knew  and  cared  too  much  for  that. 
The  kingdom  of  God  is  not  a  system  of  patronage, 
however  well  organized  and  efficient.  A  public 
charity  function  is  not  the  final  manifestation  of 
the  human  brotherhood.  The  grace  of  God  does 
not  degrade  and  humiliate  ;  it  ennobles  and  digni- 
fies. 

To  declare  that  such  considerations  are  no  part  of 
the  Church's  concern  is  to  say  that  the  Church  has 
missed  the  point  of  its  existence.  To  organize  our 
missionary  enterprise  on  the  basis  of  a  charity,  an  in- 
exhaustible patronage  of  the  indigent,  is  to  daudle 
about  a  business  for  whose  consummation  the  ages 
have  waited,  and  God  Himself  has  been  in  travail  of 
spirit.  Our  so-called  charities  and  philanthropies 
do  us  little  credit,  whenever  they  serve  only  the 
more  effectually  to  widen  the  chasm  between  the 
classes.  We  may  congratulate  ourselves  upon  feed- 
ing the  hungry  with  lavish  bounty,  but  the  hungry 
turn  away  filled  to  despise  us  and  our  system  of 
patronage  the  more.  The  common  people — make 
them  out  never  so  common — do  not  fancy  ram- 
shackle, sooty  mission  houses,  builded  for  their 
special  benefit  on  the  back  streets.  They  are  yearn- 
ing for  brotherhood,  and  they  will  not  find  the  Christ 
uutil  that  brotherhood  is  revealed.  Oh,  no  ;  they 
do  not  wish  to  be  fawned  upon  and  fondled  ;  they 
[17] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

are  not  clamouring  for  a  seat  in  the  millionaire's  pew. 
They  wish  to  be  included  as  a  matter  of  course  ;  to 
be  taken  for  what  they  are  and  have  it  in  them  to 
become  in  a  Christian  community.  They  resent 
being  made  the  sensation  of  the  Oh's  and  Ah's  and 
crocodile  tears  of  our  missionary  audiences,  only  to 
find  themselves  shunned  and  declaimed  against  by 
the  squeamish  auditors  when  it  comes  to  the  per- 
sonal contacts.  They  find  little  of  the  sincerity  of 
the  Man  of  Galilee  in  such  a  programme. 

Again  I  say,  it  is  ridiculous  to  protest  that  such 
considerations  are  of  no  interest  to  the  Church. 
These  are  matters  of  supreme  interest  to  a  Church  of 
Christ.  Unctuous  talk  of  world-saving,  and  bring- 
ing on  the  kingdom  of  God,  has  no  meaning  unless 
we  have  a  vision  of  the  democracy  of  man,  and  seri- 
ously set  about  realizing  the  hope.  That  realization 
will  not,  of  course,  come  through  a  cooked-up,  arti- 
ficial scheme  for  the  debauch  of  human  passions  and 
ignoble  ambitions,  but  it  must  come  through  the 
genuine  spirit  and  common-sense,  immediate  impacts 
of  a  Christly  sympathy  and  brotherliness.  Here  is 
involved,  you  understand,  no  merely  local  issue. 
The  whole  enterprise  to  which  the  Church  is  com- 
mitted the  world  'round  awaits  the  fulfillment  of  this 
mission  with  which  the  American  people  and  the 
American  Church  have  been  signally  charged,  the 
realization  of  the  democracy  of  man  in  the  common- 
wealth of  God. 

That  world  strategy  commissions  this  people  with 

a  peculiar  charge  is  to-day  a  truism  of  statescraft  as 

it  has  long  been  among  the  elemental  reckonings  of 

the  kingdom  of  grace.     Ever  since  Commodore  Perry 

[18] 


THE  AMEKICAN  PEOPLE 

consecrated  war-ships  to  an  embassage  of  peace  and 
good- will  in  Japan,  until,  the  other  day,  when  Presi- 
dent Boosevelt  promulgated  the  order  of  the  second 
commitment  of  self-government  to  the  Cuban  people, 
the  sentiment  of  national  self-sacrifice  for  the  good 
of  the  whole  commonwealth  of  nations  has  been  pre- 
vailing with  an  ever- deepening  intensity  in  Amer- 
ican diplomacy.  It  is  not  alone  that  this  nation 
holds  the  balance  of  power  in  the  councils  of  nations. 
It  is  not  enough  to  preserve  the  status  quo.  With  a 
new  mastery  of  self-sacrifice  American  ideals  are 
more  and  more  assuming  the  leadership.  Colonial 
extension  which  tolerates  no  violence  of  the  con- 
queror, but  which  pours  out  treasure  and  life-blood 
in  an  unrequited  ministry  for  others,  is  not  alone 
the  commonplace  of  our  own  political  theory ;  it  is 
setting  an  ideal  for  the  nations  which  will  make  the 
rapine  of  conquest  henceforth  and  forever  impossible 
the  world  around. 

The  kingdom  of  God  to-day  does  not  wait  upon 
the  proclamation  of  individual  emissaries.  The 
world  has  been  put  in  training  for  mass  movements. 
National  impacts  are  the  enginery  for  the  triumph 
of  the  kingdom  of  grace.  One  national  crime  of 
selfishness  and  commercial  grasping  may  undo  at  a 
stroke  the  patient  labours  of  a  thousand  individuals 
through  decades  of  time.  The  missionary  enterprise 
will  work  at  cross  purposes  and  frustrate  its  own  ends 
unless  it  shall  make  reckoning  of  these  latter-day  de- 
mands. "What  shall  signify  our  sending  to  the  nations 
to-day  ten  thousand  emissaries  to  preach  Christ,  if 
at  once  to-morrow  through  our  national  impacts 
upon  the  world  we  shall  work  the  works  of  Belial  1 
[19] 


WOKLD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

Without  our  willing  it,  scarcely  with  our  knowing 
it,  we  have  sent  to  the  continents,  east  and  west  and 
south,  during  the  past  few  months,  hundreds  of 
thousands  of  missionaries  in  the  persons  of  the  emi- 
grating immigrants.  No,  no,  now,  let  us  not  chew 
words,  nor  dodge  issues.  These  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands returning  to  Europe  and  elsewhere  are  mission- 
aries whether  we  will  or  no.  They  have  not  awaited 
the  rigorous  examination  and  the  appointment  of  our 
missionary  societies.  But  that  is  what  they  are, 
missionaries,  gone  on  a  propaganda.  They  were  for 
a  time  a  part  of  us,  and  they  have  gone  out  from  us 
to  tell  what  they  have  seen  and  heard  and  felt.  And 
the  crucial  world-missionary  question  is,  What  have 
they  seen  and  heard  and  felt  ?  If  the  sending  out 
of  one  of  our  number  here,  and  a  group  of  ten  or  a 
dozen  there,  to  bear  the  message  of  our  Gospel's 
power  to  save,  is  what  we  think  serious  missionary 
business,  what  shall  we  think  of  this  very  torrent  of 
peoples  pouring  into  and  then  out  of  our  life  %  Shall 
we  not  find  in  this  and  in  similar  movements  the 
real  missionary  test  and  method  of  the  new  age 
of  grace  ? 

Our  missionary  enterprise  is  in  danger  of  missing 
the  point  of  to-day's  spiritual  strategy.  We  are  in 
danger  of  dawdling  over  little  things,  and  allowing 
the  big  opportunities  to  pass  without  so  much  as  the 
discovery  that  they  are  opportunities.  We  are  in 
danger  of  faring  forth  with  our  sprinking  cans  to 
refresh  the  barren  world,  when  by  our  very  side 
surge  the  torrents  which  a  Providence  wiser  than  we 
has  prepared  for  the  fructification  of  earth's  farthest 
wastes.  We  are  in  danger  of  leaving  national  im- 
[20] 


THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

pacts  out  of  reckoning  in  our  plans  for  the  extension 
of  the  kingdom,  when  such  forces  are  the  instru- 
ments of  the  spiritual  conquest  by  the  side  of  which 
others  fall  into  comparative  insignificance.  Is  it 
statesmanlike,  is  it  in  the  least  common  sense — not 
to  speak  of  divine  inspirations — to  frustrate  our  in- 
dividual ministries  at  every  turn  by  Christless  mass 
movements  ?  to  give  the  lie  before  the  nations  to  our 
profession  of  a  saving  power  by  pouring  out  upon 
the  continents  on  every  side  our  floods  of  unmastered 
life?  Can  a  serious  missionary  enterprise  save  its 
face  before  God  or  man  while  out  of  the  very  life 
from  which  it  emanates  to  preach  Christ  it  sends 
forth  forces  to  blast  the  life  of  well-nigh  every  for- 
eign port  with  its  practices  of  Belial  ?  What  of  our 
national  impacts  upon  the  nations  ?  how  well  are  we 
living  before  the  world  the  professions  which  we 
preach  to  the  world  ?  That  is  the  insistent  mission- 
ary question  to-day. 

This  laud  of  ours  is  a  laboratory  of  grace.  How 
graciously  shall  the  nations  be  graced  by  its  grace  ? 
Men  and  nations  are  saved  to  serve.  Only  a  saved 
life  can  render  an  effective  saving  service.  A  wise 
purpose  has  chosen  this  land  and  visited  it  with 
supremely  benign  favours.  May  God  vindicate, 
through  this  people's  pure  ministry  to  the  world,  the 
wisdom  of  His  own  choice.  May  God  grant  that  we, 
His  colabourers,  shall  vindicate  the  wisdom  of  that 
choice. 


[21] 


n 

AMEEICA'S   SPIRITUAL   NEEDS    AND 
MISSION 

Some  early  day  somebody  will  write  a  book  on 
America' 8  unofficial  foreign  mission.  It  will  mark 
an  epoch  in  the  production  of  missionary  literature, 
and  will  wholesomely  enlarge  missionary  conceptions. 
The  impacts  of  our  civilization  upon  the  life  of  the 
world  are  vastly  the  most  potent  influence  we  exert. 
They  are,  for  the  most  part,  unconscious  forces.  At 
least  we  are  unconscious  of  them.  And  our  mission- 
ary programme  has  been  constructed  quite  too  much 
in  disregard  of  them. 

Our  official  foreign  missionary  programme  involves 
the  expenditures  of  (say)  fifteen  millions  of  dollars 
per  annum.  The  American  tourist  bill  last  season 
doubtless  fell  not  one  cent  short  of  five  hundred 
millions  of  dollars.  Tourist  influence  is  not  to  be 
included  in  the  spiritual  reckonings  ?  Tut !  tut ! 
Ask  the  thoughtful  of  other  nations  what  they  think. 
Do  we  not  all  read  the  magazines  and  newspapers  to 
mark  the  repeated  comments  of  the  foreign  press  ? 
The  whole  world  discovers  that  the  American  tourist 
is  exerting  a  profound  spiritual  influence.  Our  com- 
merce with  foreign  nations  has  reached  incomprehen- 
sible figures.  Exports  amount  to  two  billions  each 
year,  and  imports  are  approximately  a  billion  and 
four  hundred  millions.  Commerce  does  not  count? 
Tut !  again.  The  people  of  Africa  will  tell  you  that 
[22] 


SPIRITUAL  NEEDS  AND  MISSION 

rum  counts.  The  outraged  Chinaman  will  tell  you 
that  opium  counts.  And  steel  rails  count,  and  kero- 
sene oil,  and  harvesting  machines,  and  locomotives, 
and  wheat,  and  cotton,  and  corn,  and  ten  thousand 
different  articles  of  manufacture,  sent  out  and  brought 
in, — they  all  count  as  spiritual  forces  one  way  or  the 
other.  These  embody  much  of  that  process  the 
statesmen  of  all  the  nations  are  describing  by  the 
phrase,  the  "Americanization  of  the  world." 

Our  official  force  of  missionaries  numbers  (say) 
ten  thousand.  The  unofficial  force  runs  beyond  the 
million  most  years,  perhaps  every  year.  In  a  twelve- 
month recently  we  sent  out  more  than  a  million  of 
our  foreigners  ;  our  immigrants  emigrated  in  a  single 
year  in  that  number.  Missionaries,  to  the  last  one 
of  them,  they  were.  We  cannot  evade  the  issue, 
though  we  might  desire  to.  These  embassadors  of 
our  Gospel  have  not,  to  be  sure,  yielded  to  the  rigor- 
ous examination  of  our  theological  schools  nor 
awaited  the  formal  appointment  of  our  official  mis- 
sionary agencies.  But  that  is  what  they  are,  never- 
theless ;  missionaries  gone  on  a  propaganda.  For  a 
time  they  were  a  part  of  us.  They  have  gone  out 
from  us  to  tell  what  they  have  seen  and  heard  and 
felt.  Can  there  be  a  more  serious  missionary  ques- 
tion than  that :  What  have  they  seen  and  heard  and 
felt,  these  open-eyed,  open-hearted  folk  who  care 
little  or  nothing  for  our  theories  and  professions, 
but  have  come  close  up  to  see  and  feel  the  demonstra- 
tion of  the  redeeming  power  for  which  we  claim  so 
much  !  The  King  of  Italy  told  our  recent  Commis- 
sioner of  Immigration,  Mr.  Watchorn,  that  to  the 
remote  nook  and  cranny  of  his  kingdom  the  com- 
[23] 


WOELD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

nranity  life  of  his  people  is  being  profoundly  af- 
fected by  this  Americanizing  process.  Similar  testi- 
mony comes  from  every  other  section  of  Europe,  and 
even  from  regions  of  Asia  already. 

Oar  official  missionary  forces  are  necessarily  in- 
spired by  an  alien  training,  cherish  alien  sentiments, 
go  preaching  what  seems  in  many  of  its  aspects  an 
alien  gospel  in  an  alien  tongue  or  in  a  garbled  speech 
which  they  themselves  are  often  distressed  to  realize 
obscures  the  truth  they  seek  to  communicate.  These 
unofficial  missionaries  just  mentioned  carry  a  homely 
gospel  to  a  home  folk  in  the  intelligible  homely 
tongue,  with  a  sincerity  of  homely  impact  which 
carries  straight  home  whatever  truth  they  know. 
The  very  offstripping  of  officialism  often  proves  the 
surest  guarantee  of  missionary  effectiveness. 

Nor  are  these  unofficial  emissaries  the  intellectual 
weaklings  which  some  may  be  inclined  to  reckon 
them.  Surely  no  one  will  assert  that  these  do  not 
count  as  a  vital  and  spiritual  force.  The  process  has 
so  far  developed  as  to  include  some  of  the  most  pro- 
found intellectual  movements  of  the  present  and  the 
coming  age.  The  trooping  of  foreign  youth  to  our 
seats  of  education  is  an  event  of  profound  meaning. 
This  process  has  in  some  instances  been  reduced  to  a 
system.  We  have  all  noted  this  instance :  The 
United  States  declined  to  accept  all  of  her  share  of 
the  enormous  indemnity  exacted  of  China  after  the 
Boxer  trouble.  And  China,  not  to  be  outdone  by 
Christian  justice  and  courtesy,  has  set  apart  that 
large  sum  of  money  to  be  used  until  exhausted  in 
the  systematic  training  of  the  flower  of  her  youth  in 
American  institutions.  The  first  appointments  under 
[24] 


SPIRITUAL  NEEDS  AND  MISSION 

this  provision  have  been  made  and  the  students  are 
here.  From  now  on  till  at  least  1940  China  will  be 
sending  to  us  her  brightest  and  brainiest  to  be 
trained  in  our  institutions  of  higher  learning,  tech- 
nical and  philosophical,  to  gain  the  skill  of  our  in- 
ventive genius  in  our  great  industrial  centres,  to 
enter  into  the  intimacies  of  our  daily  life,  to  find  out 
how  we  think,  to  learn  how  we  do  things, — and,  all 
the  lessons  thoroughly  well  learned,  to  return  and 
exert  the  most  potent  influence  of  their  generation  in 
shaping  the  mightiest  civilization  of  the  new  Orient. 
Our  official  missionary  programme  has,  for  the 
most  part,  left  these  stupendous  spiritual  forces  out 
of  the  reckoning.  Why  *?  Partly  because  we  do  not 
think  far  and  wide,  and  partly  because  it  is  easier 
not  to  include  them.  They  are  excluded  for  the  very 
reason  that  they  are  so  stupendous  ;  only  the  farthest- 
reaching  plans  can  include  them.  These  forces  are 
intangible  %  Yes,  they  are  quite  intangible  except  in 
the  most  comprehensive  grasp.  They  do  not  yield  to 
organized  control  1  No,  they  do  not  yield  to  a  timid 
and  petty  policy ;  they  will  yield  only  to  such  a 
spiritual  mastery  as  shall  encompass  every  throb  and 
energy  of  this  most  puissant  people  the  world  has  yet 
produced,  the  American  public.  There  is  danger 
that  we  shall  narrow  our  spiritual  task  of  world- 
saving  until  it  shall  come  within  the  compass  of  our 
narrow  spiritual  conceptions  ;  reducing  the  proposi- 
tion to  simple  terms  may  make  it  too  cheap.  How 
can  we  discharge  our  spiritual  mission  to  the  world  ? 
By  no  method  short  of  the  complete  spiritualization 
of  the  American  people  and  our  American  civiliza- 
tion in  all  the  parts  and  processes  of  their  being. 
[25] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

Otherwise  our  official  and  unofficial  missionary  forces 
will  work  to  contrary  purposes. 

This  is  something  of  the  importance  to  be  attached 
to  our  so-called  home  mission.  So  much  is  a  rough 
outline  of  the  task  prescribed  in  the  home  missionary 
enterprise. 

Two  great  outstanding  facts  must  be  reckoned 
with  in  the  spiritualizing  process.  First,  we  are 
rich  ;  and,  second,  we  are  democratic, — or  profess  to 
be.  The  dominant  feature  of  our  civilization  is  its 
industry,  that  knack,  almost  incomprehensible  to  the 
rest  of  the  world,  by  which  we  roll  up  values  in 
material  things.  Yet  our  spiritual  ministry  has  so 
far  presumed  only  remotely  to  touch  this  fountain  of 
our  life.  The  atmosphere  of  achievement,  of  material 
prowess,  is  our  common  daily  breath  and  speech, — 
from  which  we  often  resort  to  our  religious  conclaves 
to  speak  an  unknown  tongue  and  inhale  a  foreign 
atmosphere.  Some  of  us  do  it  because  it  is  a  part  of 
the  routine,  and  some  of  us,  perhaps,  because  our 
daily  conscience  makes  us  uneasy  and  we  crave  relief. 
The  minister  stands  up  before  the  people  and  fer- 
vently thanks  God  that  we  are  given  the  chance  to 
get  away  from  the  realities  of  our  own  life.  He  calls 
it  withdrawing  from  the  world  for  a  precious  season, 
and  assures  us  and  himself  that  by  that  process  we 
are  coming  close  to  God.  That  is  to  say,  we  find 
God  by  getting  away  as  far  as  possible  from  what  is 
the  most  persistent  reality  of  our  lives.  Could  we, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  sap  our  spiritual  vigour  more 
effectually  1  And  when  we  take  in  hand  our  hymn- 
books  to  sing,  we  seek  to  conjure  up  emotional  states 
almost  as  remote  from  the  only  real  life  we  live  as  if 
[26] 


SPIRITUAL  NEEDS  AND  MISSION 

we  were  two  separate  and  distinct  personalities  in- 
stead of  the  indivisible  soul  which  God  Almighty 
breathed  into  us.  Insomuch  is  this  true  that  we  rarely 
feel  deeply  what  we  are  singing.  Great  crowds  of 
us  stand  on  tiptoe,  and  shout  at  the  top  of  the  voice, 
"I  am  a  stranger  here,  my  home  is  far  away,"  when 
the  very  essence  of  our  spiritual  value  to  God  and  our 
fellow  men  lies  in  making  ourselves  responsible  at 
home  right  here.  Our  prime  spiritual  obligation,  if 
we  might  only  comprehend  it,  is  taking  hold  to 
clean  the  filth  from  our  own  dirty  city  streets,  and 
to  clean  up  the  filthier  filth  of  our  dirtier  city  poli- 
tics. 

We  dodge  the  plainest  issue  of  the  spiritual  min- 
istry. We  think  to  exalt  the  spiritual  by  an  insincere 
repudiation  of  the  material.  We  often  profess  a  noisy 
religious  scorn  of  the  very  element  in  which  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being.  We  shall  enter  into 
the  life  of  the  spirit  not  by  an  ostentatious  spurning 
of  what  is  most  vital  in  our  American  civilization, 
namely,  its  material  forces  and  achievements.  Our 
spiritual  ministry  must  rather  address  itself  to  the 
task  of  glorifying  the  material  until  it  shall  partake 
of  the  life  of  the  spirit.  This  is  the  supreme  spiritual 
ministry  appointed  the  American  Church, — to  quit 
expressing  our  religious  life  in  artificial  and  meaning- 
less formulas  and  to  vitalize  the  life  we  are  actually 
living,  saturating  it  with  the  essences  of  the  spirit. 
We  are  doomed  to  be  a  rich  people  as  surely  as  we 
are  a  righteous  people.  It  is  the  business  of  our 
homiletics  not  to  damn  money  but  to  keep  that  same 
money  from  damning  people  and  to  make  it  an  in- 
strument of  salvation.  The  spiritual  ministry  is  not 
[27] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

properly  the  weaning  of  the  American  people  from 
their  money.  It  should  rather  be  the  revelation  to 
them  of  the  spiritual  vitality  of  this  element  in  which 
their  whole  life  is  immersed. 

No  severer  trial  awaits  our  wealthy  individual 
Americans  than  the  disposal  of  their  accumulations. 
Even  well-intended  attempts  to  better  their  fellows' 
lot  are  often  bitterly  resented.  Emphases  are  some- 
times terribly  misplaced.  The  accumulation  of  ma- 
terial values  is  the  American  genius.  By  all  the 
proprieties,  human  and  divine,  these  accumulations 
should  be  made  to  conserve  the  American  mission  in 
the  world.  That  mission  is  clear.  No  true  American 
has  ever  been  confused  at  this  point.  Our  mission  is 
the  establishment  and  maintenance  of  essential  and 
vital  democracy,  to  see  that  government  of  the 
people,  by  the  people,  for  the  people  shall  not 
perish  from  off  the  earth.  Not  government  in 
the  narrow,  political  sense  alone,  but  that  essen- 
tial democracy  which  saturates  and  is  saturated  by 
religion,  and  is  so  divinely  human  as  to  be  a  very 
sacrament. 

Wealth  is  normally  the  conservator  of  democracy. 
Its  proper  function  is  to  dignify  the  finer  elements  in 
humanity.  It  relieves  the  mind  of  the  rudimental, 
grosser  animal  anxieties.  Hunger  has  always  been 
the  foe  of  true  democracy,  and  many  a  time  has  it 
gone  down  before  the  foe  in  the  unequal  fight.  There 
has  never  been  a  time  in  human  history  when  there 
was  bread  enough  to  fill  every  mouth, — never  until 
now.  Now,  at  least  in  this  land,  there  is  no  valid 
reason  why  every  man,  woman  and  child  of  our  citizen- 
ship should  not  have  food  in  such  abundant  daily 
[28] 


SPIEITUAL  NEEDS  AND  MISSION 

supply  as  to  lift  liim  above  the  living  scale  of  the 
animal,  and  open  before  him  the  life  of  the  Immortal 
in  whose  image  he  was  created. 

Wealth,  become  the  instrument  of  plutocracy  or 
oligarchy,  is  the  very  travesty  of  its  natural  function. 
Wealth  is  possible  in  the  first  place  only  by  the 
harmonious  union  of  the  energies  of  the  many.  If 
riches  become  the  means  of  the  oppression  of  the 
many,  then  does  the  social  order  work  its  own  un- 
doing. The  many  combine  to  enslave  and  destroy 
themselves.  Life  itself  becomes  one  grand  contradic- 
tion, and  the  spiritual  verities  are  converted  iuto  a 
lie.  No  one  can  fail  to  discover  gross  contradictions 
in  our  American  life.  Our  amazing  wealth  is  not 
being  utilized  in  all  its  energies  as  an  instrument  of 
democracy.  Much  even  of  that  which  is  being,  with 
kindly  purpose,  dedicated  to  philanthropy  is  working 
to  the  undoing  of  democracy.  Charities  and  patron- 
age of  the  indigent,  prompted  by  no  matter  how  good 
intentions,  tend  to  blight  the  spiritual  nature  rather 
than  to  contribute  to  the  social  health.  The  most 
vexing  problem  the  holders  of  immense  wealth  face 
is  how  to  get  rid  of  their  wealth  in  such  fashion  as 
that  it  shall  not  damn  the  recipients  and  sap  the 
vitality  of  our  social  organism.  Manifestly  there  is 
something  serious  the  matter  with  a  social  and 
economic  system  which  precipitates  such  conditions. 
Our  rich  men  dare  not  hold  on  to  their  vast  accumula- 
tions, and  no  more  dare  they  let  go.  They  are  in  a 
predicament  which  is  more  than  amusing.  And  their 
predicament  is  the  indictment  of  our  social  order. 
It  is  time  we  quit  satisfying  ourselves  with  calling- 
one  or  another  bad  names,  and  realized  that  our 
[29] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

whole  system  is  awry  ;  that  we  are  deliberately  and 
corporately  violating  the  spiritual  verities. 

So  far  as  I  know,  the  system  has  not  yet  been  de- 
vised which  is  calculated  to  restore  the  social  balance. 
I  have  no  pet  social  or  economic  theory  to  advocate 
which  will  cure  our  spiritual  ills.  I  do  not  know  of 
such  a  system,  and  I  doubt  if  anybody  else  does.  I 
am  only  pointing  out  the  core  of  the  evil,  am 
touching  the  sore  spot.  It  now  becomes  the  duty  of 
the  spiritual  forces  to  unite  in  curing  the  evil.  Our 
many  spiritual  ills  are  symptoms  of  this  constitu- 
tional ailment.  It  is  impossible,  in  the  real  sense  of 
the  obligation,  for  the  majority  of  us  to  practice 
the  essential  brotherhood  of  our  religion  under 
present  conditions.  Doling  out  benefactions  is  not 
practicing  brotherhood,  and  accepting  the  patronage 
of  money-kings  is  not  reciprocating  brotherliness. 
The  damning  of  half  of  the  people  with  an  excess  of 
money,  and  the  damning  of  the  other  half  with  the 
lack  of  it  is  damnation  plus  damnation  and  the  result 
is  just  damnation.  The  really  Christlike  sentiments 
which  struggle  for  expression  on  every  side  do  not 
get  their  chance.  They  are  being  systematically 
and  constitutionally  suppressed  by  the  artificialities 
in  which  our  life  moves.  A  spirit  of  bitter  resent- 
ment is  being  generated  in  the  souls  of  those  who 
have  not  got  the  money,  and  those  who  have  got  the 
money  grow  equally  bitter  when  their  motives  and 
ambitions  are  so  grossly  misinterpreted.  And  yet 
all  the  money  belongs  to  all  and  there  is  enough  of  it 
for  all. 

No  one  will  contend    that    these  conditions  are 
necessary,  nor  will  any  maintain  that  what  belongs  to 
[30] 


SPIRITUAL  NEEDS  AND  MISSION 

all  cannot  be  trusted  to  all.  That  would  be  to  doubt 
the  fundamental  principles  of  democracy.  I  repeat 
that  I  do  not  believe  anybody  is  prepared  to  pre- 
scribe offhand  a  panacea  for  our  ills.  The  cure  of 
them  must  come  not  through  some  artificial,  patched 
up  scheme,  but  rather  through  the  zealous  and  open- 
minded,  sincere-hearted  endeavour  of  all.  But  one 
who  does  not  find  here  the  canker  eating  at  the  heart 
of  our  spiritual  life  lacks,  I  dare  affirm,  the  true 
spiritual  vision.  We  must  make  vital  our  American 
democracy  until  it  shall  saturate  our  whole  life  ;  that 
is  the  end  for  which  we  must  call  into  play  the  utmost 
of  the  spiritual  forces  at  command. 

It  disappoints  many,  doubtless,  not  to  deplore 
more  specifically  the  terrible  debasement  of  soul  stuff 
in  our  great  cities,  the  passing  over  without  mention 
of  the  distressing  stagnation  in  broad  sections  of  our 
older  rural  communities.  One  might  bewail  the  fact 
that  people  do  not  go  to  church  with  the  faithfulness 
of  former  generations.  But  there  one  should  run  the 
risk  of  sharp  contradiction.  Statisticians  are  arising 
to  demonstrate  that  church  attendance  never  before 
showed  such  volume.  One  can  get  little  satisfaction 
even  in  bemoaning  the  dearth  of  ministers  nowadays, 
for  some  one  is  sure  to  speak  up  with  the  vehement 
asseveration  that  there  is  no  dearth,  but  rather  a 
plethora  of  ministers.  The  shocking  waste  of  our 
denominational  duplications,  the  overlapping  of 
fields  and  agencies,  is  sorely  distressing  many  of  us 
who  come  most  intimately  into  contact  with  the 
evils.  The  general  alienation  of  organized  labour  from 
the  Church  is  enough  to  set  us  all  to  serious  thinking. 
But  little  is  gained  in  any  case  by  bother  over  inci- 
[31] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

dents,  details,  symptoms.  I  have  endeavoured  to  lead 
your  thoughts  to  the  fundamentals.  These  two  needs 
pointed  out  must  furnish  the  aim  and  goal  of  whole- 
some spiritual  endeavour  :  the  need  of  interpreting 
the  spiritual  verities  in  terms  intelligible  to  the 
common,  achieving,  money-making  American  life, 
and  the  need  of  vitalizing  our  democracy  until  it 
shall  express  the  essential  brotherliness  of  our 
religion. 

The  final  word  is  the  reemphasis  of  these  needs  in 
view  of  the  American  mission.  Money-making  is 
the  American  genius.  We  are  to-day  almost  the 
youngest,  yet  well-nigh  twice  over  the  richest  nation 
in  the  world.  Great  Britain's  sixty-odd  billions  of 
dollars  are  almost  doubled  by  our  one  hundred  and 
twenty  billions.  Our  appetite  for  production  is 
insatiable.  We  have  only  begun  that  career  of  agri- 
cultural and  mechanical  industry  which  will  keep  us 
in  the  leadership  of  the  world  for  an  indefinite  period. 
And  the  process  accumulates  wealth  at  a  prodigious 
rate.  Our  cruder  wants  are  already  supplied.  From 
this  time  forward  luxury  will  be  added  to  luxury 
beyond  the  range  of  present  conception.  We  are 
already  unable  to  consume  or  even  to  waste  the  prod- 
uct of  our  industry.  Our  increasing  culture  does 
not  limit  our  production  ;  it  rather  adds  to  its 
volume  by  enlarging  our  productive  capacity.  One 
generation  has  seen  the  per  capita  wealth  increase 
from  (say)  $150  or  $200  to  $1,500,  has  seen  the  aggre- 
gate national  wealth  grow  from  seven  or  eight  billions 
to  one  hundred  and  twenty  billions.  The  most  of 
the  accumulations  so  far  have  been  invested  in  per- 
manent implements  of  civilization,  homes,  factories, 
[32] 


SPIRITUAL  NEEDS  AND  MISSION 

mills,  vast  systems  of  transportation.  Now  that 
these  foundations  have  been  laid,  now  that  the 
enormous  expense  of  supplying  the  tools  of  our 
modern  industry  has  been  met,  what  is  to  be  done 
with  the  wealth  which  these  stupendous  investments 
will  at  once  produce  %  As  already  remarked,  we  are 
doomed  to  be  a  rich  people.  Astonishing  though  the 
present  accumulations  may  be,  the  accumulations  of 
the  future  will  overshadow  them  as  the  mountain  the 
hillock. 

Again,  democracy  is  the  American  genius.  This 
is  the  only  soil  on  earth  where  democracy  is  indige- 
nous ;  here  alone  the  air  has  never  been  tainted  by 
despotism.  Democracy  is  beginning  to  prevail  else- 
where in  the  modern  world,  but  elsewhere  it  has 
emerged  only  from  revolution.  France  is  a  republic 
but  her  democracy  was  born  in  awful,  horrible 
cataclysm.  The  taint  of  its  birth  contaminates  the 
life-blood  of  the  French  Republic.  There  was  an 
incident  in  American  history  which  is  commonly 
called  the  "  Revolution."  Dr.  Van  Dyke  in  a  series 
of  lectures  has  recently  been  clarifying  the  concep- 
tions of  both  the  French  and  the  American  people 
by  pointing  out  the  misnomer.  The  colonies'  war 
with  Great  Britain  was  not  a  revolution,  but  a  resist- 
ance to  an  attempted  revolution.  The  colonies  were 
contending  for  the  conservation  of  long  established 
ideals,  not  the  introduction  of  new  ideals.  Senti- 
ments of  human  liberty  gave  birth  to  American 
institutions,  and  every  great  spiritual  crisis  of  our 
history  has  been  the  infusion  of  our  democracy  with  a 
new  vitality.  It  will  always  be  so.  Spiritual  ills 
become  acute  when  these  ideals  are  in  jeopardy,  and 
[33] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

their  vindication  will  be  the  supreme  duty  of  the 
spiritual  forces  in  each  new  crisis. 

To-day  the  very  elements  of  our  American  genius 
appear  to  be  in  conflict  with  each  other.  Our 
money  power  seems  to  be  threatening  the  divinely 
ordained  power  of  the  people.  Our  wealth  would 
appear  to  be  overwhelming  our  democracy.  There 
is  apparent  schism  in  the  body  itself.  It  is  per- 
haps small  wonder  that  we  have  lost  our  spiritual 
nerve.  We  shall  get  back  our  nerve  by  cutting 
bravely  at  the  heart  of  the  evil.  The  people  are 
not  fit  to  control  this  modern  complicated  mecha- 
nism ?  Then  we  must  make  them  fit,  for  an  American 
state  and  an  American  Church  and  an  American 
economic  system  which  are  not  true  to  the  essential 
principles  of  democracy  are  bound  for  the  spiritual 
Gehenna.  We  dare  not  allow  the  hoi  polloi  in  our 
churches  because  their  clothes  are  dirty  and  they 
spread  disease  germs  through  the  fibre  of  our  pew 
cushions?  Then  we  must  fumigate  the  hoi  polio?  8 
clothes  and  kill  the  germs,  for  a  Church  calling  itself 
by  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  which  closes  its  doors 
actually  or  potentially  against  the  common  people 
is  spiritually  doomed.  We  dare  not  send  our  chil- 
dren to  the  public  schools  among  the  progeny  of  the 
rabble  lest  their  manners  and  morals  be  corrupted  ? 
Then  we  must  take  the  rabble  in  hand,  and  their 
progeny  with  them,  with  a  seriousness  we  have  not 
yet  attempted,  for  deliberately  to  train  the  rising 
generation  in  snobbery  is  to  blight  their  souls  and 
destroy  our  American  institutions  out  of  hand. 
We  dare  not  trust  the  people  with  the  direction  of 
spiritual  destinies,  with  the  interpretation  of  the 
[34] 


SPIRITUAL  NEEDS  AND  MISSION 

eternal  verities?  Then  we  must  acknowledge  the 
defeat  of  our  political  faith  and  of  our  religion.  I,  for 
one,  will  not  acknowledge  such  defeat.  I  profess  a 
faith  of  unconquerable  hope,  and  align  myself  with 
the  spiritual  forces  of  invincible  might.  If  there 
is  set  for  our  generation  the  complete  reconstruction 
of  the  social  order  I  can  only  rejoice  in  the  honour 
of  assignment  to  so  stupendous  and  beneficent  a 
task.  I  have  an  undaunted  faith  in  the  vitality 
of  both  elements  of  our  American  genius.  I  am 
confident  that  it  is  our  American  mission  to  teach 
the  world  the  harmony  of  these  elements,  and  their 
transplendent  glory  and  wholesomeness  when  they 
are  harmonized.  Our  wealth  is  meant  to  vitalize 
our  democratic  human  brotherhood,  and  our  de- 
mocracy, in  just  the  degree  in  which  it  is  pure,  is 
meant  to  make  and  keep  us  materially  prosperous. 
It  is  our  mission  to  set  up  the  kingdom  of  God 
here  upon  the  earth,  right  here  in  this  land  of  ours. 
By  doing  that  we  can  save  the  world.  If  we  do  not 
do  that  our  plans  for  world-saving  will  turn  out  but  a 
travesty  and  a  farce.  Come  on,  let  us,  you  and  I, 
do  that. 


[35] 


in 

WHAT  IS  INVOLVED  IN  THE  EVANGELIZA- 
TION OF  AMERICA 

Each  of  us  is  a  philosopher,  though  few  of  us 
may  have  found  it  out.  By  the  same  token,  each 
is  a  theologian,  though  fewer  still  care  to  have  it 
thrown  up  to  them.  Finally,  each  is  a  statesman, 
and  each  would  like  to  see  the  man  who  would  dare 
deny  it.  What  sort  of  an  American  would  he  be 
who  would  not  freely  confess  that  he  knows  all 
about  how  to  run  the  government  % 

The  inductive  method  is  the  only  one  which  can 
gain  the  approval  of  a  modern  science.  It  is  the 
only  conclusive  method  for  the  present  task.  But 
the  induction  of  all  the  facts  is  in  this  case  an  ex- 
ceedingly protracted  process.  The  best  we  can  hope 
for  here  is  to  make  a  running  jump  for  it,  to  hit 
only  the  high  places  as  we  get  over  the  ground. 
Without  attempting  consistently  to  apply  the  scien- 
tific, inductive  method,  suppose  I  lay  down  a  few 
general  and  sweeping  deductions  at  the  start, 
roughly  outline  a  programme  based  upon  them,  add 
a  few  comments  and  have  done.  We  must  frankly 
accept  the  fact  that  each  of  us  has  his  philosophy 
and  theology  and  ideas  of  statescraft  pretty  defi- 
nitely formed.  Of  course  by  the  proposed  method 
one  cannot  hope  to  slip  up  on  the  blind  side  of 
anybody,  and  convince  him  against  his  own  primary 
[36] 


THE  EVANGELIZATION  OF  AMERICA 

convictions.  This  is  not  an  argument,  therefore. 
There  will  be  pronouuced  difference  of  opinion  at 
several  points,  because  I  am  sure  my  philosophy  and 
theology  and  perhaps  even  my  ideas  of  government 
are  quite  different  from  those  of  many  others.  But 
nothing  will  be  lost  by  frankness. 

In  the  first  place,  it  seems  to  me  clear  that  no  con- 
sistent individualistic  philosophy  can  furnish  basis 
for  an  adequate  programme  of  evangelization.  We 
often  hear  it  said  that  after  all  the  only  way  to 
save  the  world  is  to  save  men  one  by  one.  I  must 
say  that  "  after  all"  I  do  not  believe  that  for  a 
moment.  That  is  not  the  divine  plan  of  salvation, 
and  it  is  therefore  no  worthy  human  plan.  One  of 
our  world-famous  evangelists  is  accustomed  to  dem- 
onstrate by  the  plainest  reckonings  of  mathematics 
that  one  Christian  might  save  the  entire  world  in  a 
short  generation.  His  method  is  simple  to  the  point 
of  self- evidence.  To-day  the  one  hypothetical  saved 
man  sets  out  and  reaches  one  other  with  the  saving 
message  ;  they  two  reach  one  each  to-morrow  ;  they 
four  one  each  the  next  day  ;  and  the  geometrical 
progression  is  pursued  until  at  the  end  of  a  surpris- 
ingly short  period,  and  even  allowing  for  a  high 
birth  rate  the  entire  population  of  the  globe  will 
have  been  reached.  This  evangelist,  when  in  col- 
lege, was  what  the  boys  now  call  a  mathematical 
shark  ;  he  was  careful  to  mention  that  fact  on  the 
occasion  when  I  heard  him  make  this  remarkably 
simple  demonstration.  But  the  patent  lack  of  spir- 
itual insight  seriously  compromises  his  evangel- 
ism. The  plan  is  impracticable  not  alone  because 
it  is  so  evidently  not  being  practiced,  but  because 
[37] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

the  conception  of  salvation  is  impossible  and  the 
philosophy  of  salvation  essentially  vicious. 

In  no  final  sense  of  the  word  is  it  possible  to  save 
an  individual  man.  Indeed  a  sheer,  stark  individ- 
ual is  a  fabric  of  the  imagination,  and  even  as  such 
has  never  for  long  survived.  Robinson  Crusoe  is 
one  of  the  liveliest  pieces  of  imagination  literature 
of  any  age  has  produced,  but  he  perished  on  the 
author's  hands  as  an  undiluted  individual.  By  the 
deus  ex  machina  the  man  Friday  was  swung  in  before 
the  story  was  many  pages  old.  Aristotle  made  a 
notable  remark  to  the  effect  that  man  is  a  social 
animal.  He  doubtless  meant  it  as  in  the  nature  of  a 
definition.  Man  cannot  be  practically  conceived  out 
of  his  social  relations.  Auy  system  of  thought 
which  attempts  to  define  him  out  of  those  relations, 
certainly  any  method  of  salvation  which  attempts  to 
save  him  apart  from  those  relations,  is  the  frustra- 
tion of  itself,  is  a  self-contradiction.  You  cannot 
truly  save  a  man  without  also  saving  his  social  re- 
lations, since  in  his  very  constitution  they  are  a  part 
of  the  man  and  he  is  a  part  of  them.  One  might  as 
reasonably  speak  of  saving  a  man's  intellect  while 
his  will  is  allowed  to  go  to  the  devil.  Our  modern 
psychology  has  some  time  ago  put  its  estoppel  upon 
that  process. 

Much  of  our  evangelism  is  saturated  with  this  im- 
possible chimerical  notion  of  salvation.  No  real 
progress  with  our  programme  of  evangelization  can 
be  made  by  such  a  method,  and  it  should  not  seem 
surprising  therefore  that  so  little  progress  should 
actually  have  been  made.  The  method  at  best  turns 
the  Church  into  a  sort  of  sieve  to  measure  liquids  ; 
[38] 


THE  EVANGELIZATION  OF  AMEEICA 

the  leakage  naturally  about  equals  the  intake. 
There  is  uo  occasion,  to  be  sure,  to  discard  the  term 
individual  from  either  our  philosophic  or  practical 
nomenclature  ;  we  shall  always  have  serious  need  of 
the  word  and  the  idea  it  conveys.  But  it  is  needed 
only  as  a  partial,  tentative  description  of  those  to  be 
reached  in  the  process  of  salvation,  and  can  never 
serve  as  a  final  definition  or  the  measure  of  a  saving 
process.  An  individualistic  salvation  is  a  nothing, 
a  chimera,  a  will-o'  -the- wisp  ;  there  is  no  substance 
in  it ;  pursuing  its  processes  is  trampling  a  tread- 
mill ;  it  furnishes  no  scheme  worthy  of  serious  hu- 
man endeavour,  not  to  speak  of  the  divine  councils. 

In  the  second  place,  invading  more  directly  the 
realm  of  theology,  it  may  be  remarked  that  the  sec- 
ond coming  to  earth  of  Jesus,  formerly  of  Galilee, 
for  a  personal  reign  over  the  kingdom  of  God,  can 
furnish  no  adequate  or  proper  objective  for  our  pro- 
gramme of  evangelization.  A  scheme  embodied  in 
what  is  commonly  known  as  premillenarianism  must 
break  down.  Certain  devout  students  of  the  Scrip- 
ture will  cry  out  against  such  an  assertion  and 
declare  that  no  man  can  know  his  Bible  and  make  it. 
There  is  only  to  reply  as  we  hurry  on  that  after  a 
searching  study  of  the  Bible,  I  rejoice  in  the  dis- 
covery of  a  scheme  of  salvation  so  magnificent  in  its 
proportions  and  so  vital  in  its  realities  as  seems  to 
me  to  make  the  physical  second  coming  theory  wholly 
unworthy  as  an  objective.  The  evangelization  of 
our  land  will  never  be  wrought  by  our  ' '  making  Jesus 
known"  as  the  phrase  goes,  to  each  man,  woman 
and  child  inhabiting  our  states  and  counties.  "The 
presentation  of  Christ  mto  men  is  dishonouring  to  Him 
[39] 


WOELD  MISSIONS  FBOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

and  only  a  travesty,  if  we  seek  by  such  phrases  to 
exhaust  the  divine  scheme  of  salvation.  True  evan- 
gelization is  a  perpetual  life-producing  and  life-de- 
veloping process,  which  marshals  all  the  forces  of 
physical  and  spiritual  nature  for  the  progressive 
realization  of  the  divine  economy  in  human  society. 
Surveying  also  the  realm  of  statescraft,  as  seems 
necessary  in  the  present  connection,  it  would,  in  the 
third  place,  be  both  futile  and  improper  for  me  to 
attempt  to  conceal  the  fact  that  I  am  a  democrat. 
By  which  it  will  not  appear  that  I  vote  the  ticket  of 
the  Democratic  political  party.  As  a  matter  of  fact 
I  believe  I  have  never  done  that.  Nor,  on  the  other 
hand,  have  I  ever  voted  the  ticket  of  the  socialistic 
political  party,  or  discovered  the  inclination.  You 
know  what  I  mean.  We  are  enthusiastically  agreed 
here ;  all  of  us  Americans  are  democrats.  But  now, 
perhaps,  it  does  not  wholly  appear  what  is  meant. 
I  mean  that  the  principle  of  democracy  runs 
deep  into  and  saturates  every  part  of  the  scheme  of 
human  salvation  which  a  worthy  programme  of  evan- 
gelization should  seek  to  effect.  Our  democracy  is 
not  merely  a  political  convenience.  One  often  hears 
the  complacent  remark,  as  though  the  statement 
were  self-evident,  "Of  course  a  benevolent  despot- 
ism is  the  best  form  of  human  government  if  some 
absolute  guarantee  of  the  benevolence  of  the  despot 
could  be  afforded.' '  Such  a  sentiment  is  an  outrage 
upon  true  democracy.  Even  Thomas  Jefferson  was 
a  poor  democrat  when  brought  before  the  bar.  Jef- 
ferson is  often  quoted  as  having  declared  that  "an 
absolute  monarchy  in  which  the  monarch  is  all  wise 
and  all  powerful  could  not  be  improved  upon  by  the 
[40] 


THE  EVANGELIZATION  OF  AMERICA 

imagination  of  man."  That  is  to  say  democracy  is  a 
necessary  evil,  a  way  of  getting  on  which  under 
present  conditions  affords  in  the  long  run  the  least 
embarrassment  and  hazard.  I  submit  that  that  is 
mighty  poor  democracy,  and  betrays  very  superficial 
insight,  even  though  the  seer  be  Thomas  Jefferson 
himself. 

No  degree  or  shade  or  assurance  of  benevolence,  or 
any  other  quality,  can  save  despotism,  absolutism, 
from  condemnation  as  a  method  of  human  govern- 
ment. Our  civilization  is  not  founded  upon  a  nec- 
essary evil ;  it  is  not  an  enforced  hostage  to  human 
frailty.  It  is  rather  a  tribute  to  the  nobility  of  hu- 
man nature,  and  should  be  so  conceived.  The  main 
issue  is  not  one  of  convenience,  or  even  of  economic 
security.  It  is  rather  a  principle  which  is  the  fibre, 
not  alone  of  our  political  and  economic  system,  but 
of  our  religion,  no  less.  Eeligion  itself  is  a  sapless 
thing,  a  weak  shift,  without  the  abiding,  inherent 
democratic  element. 

The  most  stressful  problem  of  democracy  to-day 
concerns  the  distribution  of  economic  rewards  and 
emoluments.  No  true  democracy  will  attempt  to 
make  a  flat  and  equal  distribution.  It  will  make 
ample  provision  for  the  superior  rewards  of  superior 
service  to  the  community.  Captains  of  industry 
ought  to  receive  captains'  emoluments.  Every  rea- 
sonable democrat  will  agree  to  that.  But  no  blind 
man  even  can  be  insensible  to  the  glaring  injustice 
of  many  of  our  present  economic  conditions.  This  is 
a  special  concern  of  those  eager  for  the  coming  of 
the  kingdom  of  heaven,  in  which  righteousness  and 
justice  will  prevail. 

[41] 


WOELD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

I  visited  a  rapidly  growing  industrial  centre  not 
long  ago,  invited  to  speak  in  a  church  on  the  immi- 
gration question.  The  church  people  of  the  com- 
munity are  greatly  concerned  and  eager  that  some- 
thing practical  shall  be  done.  The  chairman  of  the 
evening  is  one  of  them.  I  was  told  incidentally 
that  tbis  gentleman,  one  of  the  foremost  citizens  of 
the  region,  is  head  of  a  manufacturing  establish- 
ment, employing  large  numbers  of  foreigners.  His 
company  has  quadrupled  its  capital  stock  in  three 
years  without  its  costing  the  stockholders  one  cent, 
and  with  no  break  in  the  payment  of  twelve  per  cent, 
annual  dividends  upon  the  nominal  stock.  That  is, 
each  one  of  the  stockholders  has  been  presented 
with  values  four  times  his  original  holdings  without 
his  turning  hand  in  that  interest.  And  the  work- 
men, partners  in  the  enterprise  f  Oh,  yes,  they  are 
members  of  the  great  army  of  American  working- 
men,  the  best  paid  labourers  in  the  world,  you  know. 
They  live  on  a  scale  which  their  friends  back  in 
the  old  country  reckon  princely.  But,  now,  does 
that  hit  the  point?  Does  that  settle  the  question  ? 
Is  there  any  real  partnership  in  that  enterprise? 
You  see  I  say  nothing  of  the  much-forgotten  ulti- 
mate consumer,  forgotten  though  ^he  is  much  talked 
about  nowadays,  who  is  manifestly  paying  three  or 
four  prices  for  his  commodities,  and  who  by  all 
the  equities  must  also  be  reckoned  a  partner  in  this 
business.  On  any  reckoning  is  there  economic  de- 
mocracy in  that  order  of  affairs,  and  can  religion 
which  cultivates  or  even  permits  that  sort  of  thing 
hope  to  keep  its  vitality  ?  Church  people  who  live 
and  do  business  on  that  basis  are  casting  about 
[42] 


THE  EVANGELIZATION  OF  AMEEICA 

to  evangelize  the  poor  ignorant  foreigners.  The 
foreigners  may  be  very  ignorant,  but  they  certainly 
are  intelligent  enough,  and  enough  appreciative  of 
the  essences  of  the  democracy  they  have  come  seek- 
ing, to  discover  the  inherent  incongruity  of  such  a 
programme. 

This  is  not  an  insolated  instance.  Indeed  it  was 
chosen  as  one  of  the  mildest  of  the  many  within  reach 
of  every  intelligent  person.  Times  over  more  fla- 
grant sacrifices  of  the  democratic  essences  are  prev- 
alent through  the  industrial  centres  all  along  the  At- 
lantic seaboard.  Such  injustice  saturates  the  eco- 
nomic atmosphere  of  the  middle  West  and  the  farther 
West.  These  conditions  are  not  superficial  flaws, 
the  outcropping  of  individual  human  frailties.  They 
are  tacitly  sponsored  by  the  finest  of  individual  spir- 
its, many  of  them  the  best  people  of  our  churches. 
They  reveal  the  need  of  fundamental  reconstructions, 
revised  conceptions  not  alone  in  the  economic  realm 
but  the  religious  no  less. 

It  is  not  the  business  of  human  government  merely 
to  get  people  governed.  Its  function  is  to  enable 
people  to  govern.  Despotism  in  any  realm,  eco- 
nomic or  other,  is  inherently  incompatible  with 
that  aim.  Let  it  do  what  it  sets  out  to  do  never 
so  efficiently  ;  let  it  preserve  order  till  hot  a  cock 
shall  crow  out  of  time  and  tune  ;  let  it  supply  the 
mechanism  of  government  or  of  industry  till  not  a 
cog  shall  grate  upon  its  fellow,  yet  is  it  inevitably 
doomed  to  failure  because  it  does  not  set  out  to 
perform  the  needful  in  the  first  place.  Analo- 
gously, a  scheme  of  salvation  which  embodies  a  sys- 
tem of  patronage  and  which  conceives  of  the  ele- 
[43] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

merits  of  society  in  that  relationship,  must  fail  to 
save,  from  the  very  fact  that  it  is  that  sort  of  a 
scheme,  no  matter  how  lavishly  it  may  rain  boun- 
ties, pour  out  charities,  or  seek  to  interpret  the 
divine  compassion  under  the  terms  of  benefactions 
to  the  indigent.  In  short,  just  as  worthy  human 
government  is  an  essence  which  issues  from  the 
heart  of  human  life  and  human  society  rather  than 
an  artificially  constructed  and  extraneous  scheme 
of  control,  so  the  salvation  which  really  saves  is 
the  expression  of  the  individual's  and  society's 
abiding  life  rather  than  a  patronage- bestowing  or 
patronage-accepting   institution,    however    effective. 

Here  is  the  objective  therefore  to  which  a  worthy 
programme  of  evangelization  commits  us,  this  :  the 
transformation  of  human  life  after  the  pattern  of 
the  Christ  life,  the  reconstruction  of  our  society 
after  the  constitution  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  as 
Christ  conceived  it,  the  capture  for  righteousness 
and  God  of  every  force  and  process  of  our  civiliza- 
tion, economic,  social,  political,  commercial,  indus- 
trial, communal,  national,  international.  To  attempt 
less  is  to  cheapen  our  task  till  it  is  unworthy  of  a 
serious  evangel.     We  cannot  attempt  more. 

You  and  I  are  church  people,  let  us  presume,  ac- 
customed to  approach  the  spiritual  problems  of  our 
society  through  the  Church.  What  is  the  proper 
function  of  the  Church  to-day?  What  are  the  out- 
standing spiritual  problems?  Where  do  spiritual 
problems  begin  and  other  sorts  of  problems  leave  off? 
The  programme  of  evangelization  so  roughly  outlined 
just  now  makes  an  accurately  constructed  theory  of 
the  Church  a  very  important  consideration.  Yet 
[44] 


THE  EVANGELIZATION  OF  AMERICA 

important  as  such  a  task  must  be,  it  is  to  the  side  of 
the  road  along  which  our  discussion  is  hastening. 
It  must  be  sufficient  now  to  say  that  there  is  a  sound 
and  wholly  practicable  theory  to  match  the  pro- 
gramme. Many  persons  can  only  accept  with  bewil- 
derment if  not  with  annoyance  the  so  prevalent  talk 
nowadays  in  religious  assemblages  about  economic 
conditions  and  problems.  What  concern,  ask  they, 
can  "  purely  spiritual "  agencies  have  with  industrial 
complications  and  labour  conflicts  and  political  graft 
and  all  that  sorry  mess?  To  make  direct  reply 
would  lead  far  into  that  discussion  of  the  theory  of 
the  Church  from  which  we  must  turn  aside.  But  the 
programme  of  evangelization,  whatever  may  prove 
a  satisfactory  theory  of  the  Church,  has  necessarily  a 
very  intimate  concern  with  political  graft  and  labour 
conflicts  and  industrial  maladjustments  and  any 
distraught  conditions  which  affect  our  social  organ- 
ism. Our  programme  is  the  capture  for  righteous- 
ness and  God  of  every  force  and  process  of  civiliza- 
tion, economic,  social,  industrial,  commercial,  polit- 
ical, or  other.  It  is  no  degree  short  of  the  setting  up 
of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  upon  earth. 

That  is,  to  be  sure,  a  staggering  proposition,  if  one 
is  of  the  sort  to  be  staggered.  It  is  perhaps  not  un- 
natural that  various  attempts  are  made  to  avoid  the 
plain  issue  involved.  The  temptation  to  construct  a 
philosophy  and  theology  which  will  permit  saving 
the  face  while  the  issue  is  evaded  is  for  many  irre- 
sistible. We  can  here  follow  only  two  of  these 
shifts.  In  the  first  place,  much  of  the  missionary 
enthusiasm  of  our  day  has  been  rallied  by  the  slogan, 
"The  Evangelization  of  the  World  in  the  Present 
[45] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

Generation."  That  cry  has  in  it  the  appeal  of  a 
great  and  triumphing  purpose.  When  it  means  what 
it  says,  it  may  indeed  marshal  the  hosts  for  a  genu- 
ine spiritual  conquest.  It  has  been  much  criticized 
as  too  ambitious ;  it  is  so  large  as  to  be  visionary. 
Nay,  nay ;  there  is  rather  to  complain  because  it 
is  too  narrow  and  cheap.  That  is  to  say,  its  frequent 
interpretation  is  narrow  and  cheap.  One  or  another 
is  sometimes  heard  shouting  that  slogan  in  the  attempt 
to  rally  the  spiritual  hosts,  who  forthwith  inexpress- 
ibly weakens  his  appeal  by  an  insipid  definition  of 
the  term  evangelization.  Evangelization  implies 
only  that  a  preaching  church  shall  proclaim  its  mes- 
sage. Its  sole  responsibility  is  bearing  the  witness, 
whether  the  world  shall  hear  or  forbear.  It  is  not 
our  concern  that  the  world  as  such  shall  be  saved  ; 
our  obligation  ends  with  bearing  the  witness.  That 
duty  laboriously  performed,  we  may  contentedly 
await  the  triumphant  descent  of  our  Lord  of  glory  to 
witness  the  discomfiture  of  the  unbelieving  and  the 
bliss  of  the  redeemed.  Oh,  oh,  oh  !  It  is  not  to  the 
present  purpose  to  dwell  upon  the  heartlessness  of 
such  a  programme  ;  its  cheapness  is  the  point.  As 
though  a  serious  generation  should  put  itself  to  the 
strain  so  that  it  might  lust  its  ears  with  the  crack  of 
doom  !  The  best  which  can  be  said  for  such  a  pro- 
gramme is  that  it  gains  its  inspiration  from  John  the 
Baptist, — though  that  is  doing  the  good  man  gross 
injustice.  He  was  only  a  witness,  a  voice  crying  in 
the  wilderness.  The  proposed  programme  does  not 
reckon  that  the  Christ  has  come,  whose  function  it  is 
to  bring  things  to  pass. 

The  story  is  sometimes  told  of  the  British  tar  who 
[46] 


THE  EVANGELIZATION  OF  AMEEICA 

was  asked  how  long  a  time  would  be  required  by  the 
forces  of  the  British  Navy  to  convey  a  message  from 
His  Majesty,  the  King  of  England,  to  each  inhabitant 
of  the  globe.  After  some  pondering,  the  matter-of- 
fact  sailorman  ventured  to  estimate  that  the  thing 
might  be  done  in  eighteen  months'  time.  The  story 
is  often  told  to  cast  reproach  upon  the  heralds  of 
Christ  for  their  dilatory  ways.  More  than  nineteen 
centuries  have  passed  and  still  millions  have  never 
heard, — and  so  on.  Those  heralds  are  doubtless  all 
too  dilatory,  but  the  story  carries  with  it  exceedingly 
uncomplimentary  implications  as  to  the  nature  of  the 
programme  contemplated.  As  though  the  proclama- 
tion of  the  Gospel  of  Christ  were  something  like  an 
eighteen  months'  job ;  as  though  a  certain  play  of 
sound  waves  on  the  tympanum  of  men's  ears  were 
sufficient  !  It  would  be  interesting  to  know,  doubt- 
less, whether  the  sailor's  calculations  are  correct,  but 
the  results  of  the  test  would  scarcely  have  even 
academic  value.  Perhaps  the  Church's  signal  service 
corps  might  perform  such  a  feat,  but  the  newspapers 
would  have  more  startling  news  to  crowd  out  the  re- 
port the  very  next  day.  A  spiritual  programme 
which  does  not  grip  and  transform  lives,  and  fit  them 
to  their  essential  social  relations  and  which  does  not 
employ  the  means  adequate  to  that  end,  is  too  cheap 
for  any  serious  generation. 

This  shift  has  an  emasculating  influence  upon  home 
mission  endeavour  especially,  since  by  its  computa- 
tions the  work  of  evangelization  for  the  United  States 
of  America  has  been  already  effected,  or  has  been  so 
nearly  done  that  the  demand  for  further  effort  sinks 
into  comparative  insignificance.  Jesus  has  been 
[47] 


WOELD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

made  known,  the  presentation  has  been  made  to 
practically  every  inhabitant  of  our  states  aud  terri- 
tories ;  each  has  had  his  chance  to  hear  and  believe 
and  be  saved,  and,  in  so  far,  the  Church  can  now  be 
relieved  of  concern,  while  more  stressful  obligations 
are  met  elsewhere.  The  stupendous  spiritual  prob- 
lems of  our  generation,  every  one  of  which  in  this 
land  of  ours  loom  into  colossal  world  significance, 
are  hopeless  in  just  the  degree  in  which  our  mission- 
ary agencies  are  under  the  domination  of  such  a  mis- 
sionary conception.  The  discerning  have  observed 
that  much  of  our  conspicuous  missionary  propaganda 
is  so  dominated.  It  will  of  course  get  us  no  where  on 
the  road  to  a  real  goal.  The  enthusiasm  it  generates 
will  evaporate  to  no  effect  unless  it  can  be  captured 
by  a  more  serious  purpose.  A  ministry  of  evangeli- 
zation which  lets  off  the  spiritual  forces  of  our  Ameri- 
can life  with  bearing  a  witness,  and  which  does  not 
make  strict  exactions  as  to  the  actual  bringing  things 
to  pass,  which  does  not  at  every  turn  test  the  validity 
of  the  message  by  its  powers  of  reconstruction,  is  a 
delusion  which  no  serious  people  will  entertain. 

The  other  shift  which  avoids  the  plain  issue  of  our 
programme  is  directly  antithetic  to  that  just  men- 
tioned. It  reminds  us  that  humau  progress  is  made  by 
the  processes  of  evolution,  which  are  slow,  not  to  say 
tedious.  At  least  a  thousand  years  have  been  con- 
sumed by  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  in  its  emergence  from 
barbarism,  and  its  rise  to  the  present  exalted  station. 
Other,  backward  races,  please  take  notice.  Do  not 
expect  too  much  of  yourselves.  Nature  fails  ten 
thousand  times  where  she  succeeds  once.  The  devel- 
opment of  varieties  and  species  of  animal  and  plant 
[48] 


THE  EVANGELIZATION  OF  AMERICA 

life  has  been  an  inconceivably  tedious  process.  How 
many  millions  of  years  is  it  now  since  the  first  fleck 
of  protoplasm  dropped  upon  the  earth,  and  set  about 
the  generation  of  the  life  with  which  the  earth  now 
teems  ?  So  many  millions,  at  any  rate,  that  nobody 
pretends  to  estimate  them  accurately.  Have  patience  ; 
jog  along  ;  peg  away.  Remember  that  Rome  was 
not  built  in  a  day ;  civilizations  are  not  the  creation  of 
an  instant. 

All  of  which  cautioning  doubtless  has  its  value, 
but  the  caution  is  easily  overworked.  Allow  it  true 
that  progress  is  made  by  the  processes  of  evolution. 
Allow  it  true  that  nature  has  consumed  cycles  of  ages 
in  her  undirected  production  of  species  and  varieties. 
Yet  does  Luther  Burbank,  our  modern  wizard  of 
horticulture,  sit  by,  mooning,  while  nature  produces 
new  varieties  and  species  in  his  garden  1  Is  there  no 
office  for  divinely  inspired  wizards  of  the  spiritual 
horticulture  ?  Because  the  development  of  the  rudi- 
ments of  civilization  has  consumed  millenniums  does 
it  follow  that  new  millenniums  must  roll  over  before 
civilization  shall  take  on  new  enrichments?  Is 
history  intended  as  a  millstone  slung  about  our  necks 
to  plunge  us  into  the  slough  of  inanition,  because, 
forsooth,  the  generations  past  have  moved  upon  slow 
foot  ?  Is  not  history  rather  intended  as  an  inspira- 
tion to  rouse  us  out  of  our  sluggishness?  Our 
modern  science  has  a  far  wholesomer  lesson  to  teach 
than  one  of  stagnation.  It  is  sometimes  asserted,  as 
though  it  were  a  truism,  You  cannot  hustle  nature. 
On  the  contrary,  that  is  precisely  what  our  modern 
science  is  joining  hands  with  the  grace  of  God  to 
enable  us  to  do,  to  bustle  nature,  to  pack  millenniums 
[49] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

into  years.  And,  what  is  more,  nature  of  every 
realm,  physical  or  spiritual,  delights  to  be  hustled. 
She  is  arching  her  neck  and  champing  her  bits  to  be 
let  go  upon  a  merry  drive,  the  thrill  of  which  we 
have  not  yet  conceived.  It  is  sheer  paganism  to 
stand  in  craven  dread  or  in  complacent  indolence 
before  the  forces  of  either  the  physical  or  the  spiritual 
world.  As  though  God  were  an  angry,  fretful  Zeus, 
seeking  pretext  against  the  stressful ;  as  though  earth 
and  air  and  water  were  teeming  with  harpies  lusting 
to  blast  human  presumption !  "We  have  got  a 
different  God  since  Christ,  and  we  live  in  a  different 
world.  We  have  been  taught  to  pray,  Thy  king- 
dom come  on  earth,  and  we  are  poor  Christians  if  we 
have  not  the  courage  of  our  petitions. 

If  you  ask,  Is  this  programme  of  evangelization 
possible  for  one  generation  ?  I  also  will  ask  you  one 
question,  Can  any  serious  generation  be  content  to 
attempt  less !  The  question  is  tantamount  to  asking 
whether  we  propose  to  attempt  the  realization  of  our 
ideals.  What,  pray  tell,  is  the  value  of  ideals,  else  ? 
The  evangel  of  any  generation  is  its  Christian  inter- 
pretation of  things.  Can  any  generation  claim  to  be 
considered  serious  or  Christian  which  does  not  attempt 
to  realize  its  interpretation  ?  It  does  not  diminish 
either  the  joy  or  duty  of  you  and  me,  but  rather 
magnifies  them  both,  that  another  generation  shall  in 
its  turn  strive  for  the  new  realization  of  its  new 
evangel. 

I  hope  we  all  begin  to  realize  something  of  the  task 

we  have  on  our  hands.     I  do  not  see  how  any  sensible 

man,  not  to  speak  of  a  devout  man,  could  think  of 

exchanging  it  for  a  smaller  or  cheaper.     Least  of  all 

[50] 


THE  EVANGELIZATION  OF  AMERICA 

can  respect  be  accorded  the  weak  purpose  and  timid 
faith  which  interpret  evangelization  as  a  smattering 
process,  dribbling  questionable  virtue  over  the  in- 
habitants of  the  earth  in  haphazard  fashion.  In  the 
construction  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  regard  must 
be  had  of  its  solidarity,  its  demand  for  citizenship —a 
thoroughgoing  citizenship,  nothing  less, — which  com- 
passes human  need,  and  leaves  no  essential  element 
of  human  welfare  an  alien  concern. 


[51] 


IV 

WHAT  THE  FOREIGNER  IS  TEACHING  US 

We  have  so  perpetually  concerned  ourselves  with 
what  we  shall  do  for  the  foreigner,  that  we  may  not 
have  apprehended  clearly  what  the  foreigner  in  his 
turn  is  doing  for  us.  Or,  if  we  have  given  this  side 
concern,  it  has  been  for  the  most  part  to  shorten  the 
phrase  and  complain  of  how  the  foreigner  is  "doing 
us."  Maybe,  after  all,  we  are  getting  the  better  of 
the  bargain.  At  any  rate,  only  after  seriously  con- 
sidering what  he  is  doing  for  us  will  we  be  most  wise 
to  know  what  we  can  do  for  him.  Until  that  dis- 
covery is  made  we  shall  almost  certainly  be  doing  the 
wrong  thing. 

In  our  high  poetic  flights  we  sometimes  magnify 
the  artistic  temperament  and  talent  of  the  Italian,  for 
example,  or  the  Russian  exile's  stern  and  abandoned 
devotion  to  liberty  or  death,  the  German's  inground 
reverence  for  education  and  the  institutions  of  learn- 
ing,— and  all  that  sort  of  thing.  None  can  deny  a 
modicum  of  prose  truth  in  the  fine  poetry.  Their 
racial  virtues  the  immigrants  of  these  several  races 
have  not  left  behind  ;  they  have  brought  them  along 
to  enrich  our  life.  And  we  need  the  virtues  which 
these  and  all  others  can  contribute. 

This  glory  of  the  immigration  business  its  ugly 

features  can  never  obliterate.     What  a  magnificent 

product  will  be  the  American  character  when  the 

process  of  amalgamation   has  gone  forward  a  few 

[52] 


WHAT  THE  FOEEIGNEE  IS  TEACHING  US 

further  stages  !  How  little  any  one  race  expresses 
the  full  measure  of  the  human  character  !  How  far 
short  does  any  one  strain  of  racial  nature  fall  of  run- 
ning the  full  gamut  of  human  possibility  !  And 
what  a  splendid  product  will  be  the  combination  of 
them  all  in  the  coming  American  ! 

Amalgamation  in  the  crude,  physical  sense  of  the 
term  is  perhaps  repugnant  to  the  most.  Few  parents 
fancy  the  thought  of  their  children  marrying  the 
foreigner, — unless,  of  course,  he  happen  to  be  a 
prince,  or  decorated  with  gewgaws  inherited  from 
his  ancestors.  Then,  let  him  be  never  such  a  rake, 
there  are  fond  American  mammas  and  ambitious 
American  misses  in  plenty  to  bargain  for  his  person, 
titles,  prestige  in  a  decayed  civilization,  degeneracy, 
vices  and  all.  Yet,  one  may  feel  all  the  horror  to 
which  any  of  us  is  accustomed  at  the  thought  of  in- 
termarriage and  physical  amalgamation,  and  still  be 
thrilled  by  the  thought  of  what  the  future  is  to  pro- 
duce in  this  land,  of  an  epitome  of  the  human  fami- 
lies, a  combination  of  racial  virtues  winch  shall  lift 
the  whole  human  race  to  higher  levels  of  realization. 

All  that  must  be  included  as  a  part  of  the  reckon- 
ing. But  perhaps  all  do  not  feel  in  the  poetic  or 
prophetic  mood.  If  some  one  should  speak  up  to 
remind  us  of  the  Italian's  dagger  as  well  as  his 
painter's  palette,  the  fact  must  be  admitted  that 
those  of  the  Italian  immigrants  of  whom  we  read  the 
most  in  the  newspapers  are  more  consummate  artists 
of  the  stiletto  than  of  the  paint-brush.  The  Black- 
hand  is  no  fiction,  with  all  of  the  difficulty  the  police 
find  in  laying  hands  upon  it.  Nobody  knows  quite 
what  it  is,  but  the  murders  still  roll  up,  and  if  there 
[53] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

ia  not  some  organized  engine  of  assassination  oper- 
ating, the  results  would  at  any  rate  do  credit  to  such. 
Some  new  victim  of  the  bomb  or  the  stiletto  is  an- 
nounced every  few  days.  It  requires  a  deal  of  ideal- 
istic philosophizing  to  discover  in  the  average  Russian 
immigrant  that  stern  devotion  to  human  liberty  with 
which  he  is  accredited.  Rather,  he  has  often  showed 
himself  a  pessimist  and  breeder  of  chronic  and 
irreconcilable  discontent.  Maybe  the  German  loves 
education  and  discovers  a  passion  for  abstract  learn- 
ing, but  it  is  rather  his  beer  for  which  he  is  com- 
monly observed  uncovering  a  passion. 

This  phase  of  the  subject  must  always  prove  di- 
verting. On  the  whole,  a  far  better  case  could  be 
made  out  for  each  of  the  races  than  the  most  of  us 
are  disposed  to  allow.  These  are  mighty  peoples 
whose  representatives  are  coming  to  us;  there  are 
among  them  the  hardiest  and  finest- tempered  char- 
acters the  evolution  of  the  ages  has  produced.  Here 
is  a  tremendous  deal,  indeed,  which  the  foreigner  is 
doing  for  us :  he  is  moulding  the  American  character 
of  the  future,  and  it  is  easy  faith  to  believe  that  the 
future  will  show  it  to  be  the  choicest  produced  upon 
the  earth. 

But  the  nearer  present :  what  is  the  immigrant 
doing  for  us  right  now  "i  Building  our  railroads, 
laying  the  gas-pipes  in  our  streets,  burrowing  out 
our  cellars ;  driving  spikes  and  digging  ditches, 
doing  our  dirty  work.  Pass  that  by,  also.  It  is  all 
true  ;  he  is  doing  all  that,  slaving  that  our  homes 
and  marts  may  wear  their  sheen.  And  he  is  getting 
high  wages  at  it,  saving  money  and  shipping  it  by 
the  million  to  his  friends  and  dependents  in  foreign 
[54] 


WHAT  THE  FOREIGNER  IS  TEACHING  US 

parts.  Some  may  rise  up  to  declare  the  accounts 
even.  The  foreigner  does  work  hard,  but  he  does  it 
of  his  own  choice.  That  is  what  vastly  the  larger 
proportion  came  for,  to  work.  Hard  and  high- 
priced  labour  they  came  seeking  ;  that  is  what  they  are 
getting.  Everybody  realizes  that  there  is  more  to 
be  said,  pro  and  con.     But  pass  on. 

I  specify  two  things  the  foreigner  is  doing  for  us, 
matters  of  immediate  concern,  yet  not  incidents  of 
passing  moment  nor  of  trifling  importance.  They 
loom  large  to-day  and  run  their  roots  deep  into 
the  eternal  values. 

And  the  first  is  this  :  The  foreigner  is  putting  to 
the  test  our  announced  principles  of  human  liberty 
and  our  philosophy  of  the  social  organism.  He  is 
compelling  us  to  do  what  our  fathers  did  at  the 
founding  of  this  Republic,  what  they  did  in  their  own 
age  and  for  their  own  age  so  grandly  that  history 
will  rank  them  higher  and  higher  among  the  great 
as  the  years  roll  on.  We  have  got  to  turn  philos- 
ophers of  human  government,  we  thoughtless  Amer- 
icans have  in  our  generation.  We  have  got  to  de- 
cide what  we  are  going  to  do  about  things.  We 
have  got  to  learn  that  letting  things  slide  is  no  way 
to  land  things  right  side  up  and  where  they  belong. 
We  have  got  all  this  to  do.  It  cannot  be  delegated 
to  a  few  alleged  statesmen  at  Washington,  nor  to  the 
editors  of  esoteric  magazines.  Through  every  val- 
ley and  along  every  street  there  must  appear  thought- 
ful students  of  the  times.  Much  of  the  economic  and 
social  theory  handed  down  to  us  in  rigid  form  has 
got  to  be  recast  and  remodelled  to  meet  immediate 
and  practical  demands. 

[55] 


WOELD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

Your  natural-born,  untainted  American  is  suffo- 
cated in  the  crowded  city  ;  stuffing  him  into  a  tene- 
ment is  like  casting  him  into  prison.  The  whole  of 
our  national  history  has  been  one  grand  breakaway 
from  the  trammels  of  the  crowd.  There  has  been  a 
steady  march  westward  to  the  open  country.  We 
have  been  seizing  and  occupying  a  continent  in  such 
a  rapid  movement  as  to  overmatch  any  similar  event 
of  human  history.  And  in  this  march  the  native 
American,  and  not  the  uuassimilated  foreigner,  has 
invariably  led.  Each  of  our  new  states  has  been 
originally  settled  by  native  Americans.  The  purest 
American  population  in  the  entire  country  to-day  is 
that  of  Oklahoma.  That  populous  and  all  but  the 
newest  state  in  the  Union  has  the  purest  American 
stock.  Eeckon  the  aboriginal  Indian  as  a  "  for- 
eigner," yet  is  the  statement  true.  Only  yesterday 
the  most  of  the  territory  was  a  wilderness  ;  to-day  it 
contains  a  million  and  a  half  of  people.  Yet  less 
than  six-tenths  of  one  per  cent,  of  the  yearly  influx 
of  foreign  immigration  lands  in  Oklahoma.  The 
native  American  takes  to  the  woods  and  the  open 
prairie  like  a  duck  to  water ;  and  the  foreign  immi- 
grant does  not.  The  American  discovers  a  passion 
as  yet  unsatiated  for  the  new  country.  He  must 
have  ten  miles  square,  more  or  less,  to  stretch  his 
arms  and  lungs  in.  He  is  true  to  the  original  type 
only  when  he  has  all  outdoors  to  spread  himself. 

The  immigrant  is  not  of  that  ilk.  When  he  is  the 
duck  the  crowded  city  is  the  pond.  Our  cities  east 
and  west  are  teeming  with  foreigners.  The  propor- 
tion of  foreign  born  in  the  population  runs  well  over 
half  in  several  of  them. 

[56] 


WHAT  THE  FOREIGNER  19  TEACHING  US 

Now  this  is  more  than  a  phenomenon  to  call  forth 
the  desultory  investigations  of  the  statisticians. 
This  is  serious  business  for  every  thoughtful  and 
conscientious  citizen.  It  is  a  notorious  fact  that 
American  city  government  is  the  worst  in  the  civ- 
ilized world.  Several  of  our  greatest  modern  states- 
men have  said,  and  are  saying  with  a  more  serious 
shake  of  the  head  every  day,  that  the  rock  upon 
which  our  American  ship  of  state  will  founder,  if 
she  should  go  down,  would  be  municipal  adminis- 
tration, the  government  of  our  great  unwieldy  cities. 

What  is  the  alternative  then  f  Shall  we  break 
out  in  bitter  and  uncompromising  maledictions  of 
these  dirty,  good-for-nothiug,  rascally  foreigners, 
as  the  manner  of  some  is  1  That  is  a  senseless  way 
to  go  at  our  task.  In  the  first  place  the  charge  is 
not  true.  The  foreigners  are  not  dirty,  good-for- 
nothing  rascals.  They  are  good  for  an  immense 
deal ;  they  are  not  rascals  ;  and  they  have  contrib- 
uted much  thrift  to  our  communities.  In  the  second 
place,  maledictions,  however  well  justified  by  the 
facts,  can  never  meet  the  situation  and  save  our 
jeopardized  social  organism.  Swearing  never  even 
healed  a  smashed  thumb. 

The  truth  is  we  are  early  getting  our  chance  at  a 
condition  which  is  bound  to  arise  sooner  or  later, 
anyway.  We  would  far  better  attack  these  prob- 
lems of  congestion,  of  city  life,  with  a  population  of 
ninety  millions,  than  shirk  the  responsibility  and  let 
matters  slide  until  our  institutions  are  overwhelmed 
by  a  population  of  nine  hundred  millions.  A  popu- 
lation about  that  size  will  be  here  some  day.  One 
full  generation  more  will  establish  two  hundred  mil- 
[57] 


WOELD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

lions  in  our  domain.  The  American  character  has 
got  to  produce,  to  develop  into  a  new  type.  Now  is 
none  too  early  to  begin  the  serious  business.  We 
cannot  go  on  forever  scattering  into  new  country. 
The  earth  isn't  big  enough.  A  man  who  demands 
ten  miles  square  to  be  comfortable  in  would  best 
modify  his  tastes.  The  earth  was  not  laid  out  upon 
that  extravagant  and  wasteful  basis.  It  is  time 
the  American  people  realized  that  there  is  more  to 
civilization  than  pioneering,  and  that  the  earth  was 
intended  for  other  and  more  serious  purposes  than 
the  herding  of  long-horned  cattle. 

Such  wholesome  lessons  the  foreigner  has  come 
over  to  teach  us.  He  is  correcting  a  reckless  and 
extravagant  tendency  which,  if  allowed  to  confirm 
itself  by  a  few  more  generations,  would,  under  the 
laws  of  the  world  economy,  eventually  blight  Ameri- 
can character  and  wreck  American  institutions. 
We  have  got  sooner  or  later  to  learn  how  to  live  in 
cities,  and  make  them  decent  enough  to  live  in. 
The  modern  immigrant  has  come  over  to  tell  us  we 
would  better  get  at  the  business  sooner,  when  there 
is  still  good  chance  of  our  succeeding  at  it. 

The  present-day  immigrant  is  notoriously  grega- 
rious, clannish.  He  soon  converts  a  country  village 
into  a  city  ;  if  he  does  not  find  a  city  close  at  hand 
into  which  he  can  crowd  he  forthwith  makes  one. 
The  tendency  is  inexplicable  and  often  maddening 
to  the  old-fashioned  American.  He  cannot  for  the 
life  of  him  understand  why  human  beings  should 
fancy  jambing  themselves  in  so  close  together.  We 
have  never  developed  systems  of  sanitation  or  any 
other  civic  institutions  to  meet  such  conditions,  and 
[58] 


WHAT  THE  FOREIGNER  IS  TEACHING  US 

many  are  ready  to  vote  the  foreigners  beasts  aud 
treat  them  as  such.  The  most  of  us  do  not  our- 
selves comprehend  how  provincial  we  are,  how  in- 
adequate are  our  institutions  to  stand  the  severe 
tests  of  the  new  world  into  which  the  human  race  is 
now  moving.  Our  original,  all  out-of-doors  methods 
of  life  are  as  ill  prepared  to  serve  in  this  new 
world  as  a  clumsy  boy  is  unfitted  for  the  dexterous 
and  masterful  achievements  of  the  man.  Our  demo- 
cratic institutions  are  exceedingly  delicate ;  wrong 
tendencies  must  be  taken  in  hand  and  controlled 
in  time  else  such  intricate  mechanism  will  be  hope- 
lessly wrecked.  This  great  and  delicately  con- 
structed Republic  cannot  go  blundering  on  into 
new  and  untried  ways,  as  the  older  and  cruder  des- 
potic civilizations  have  done.  Republics  cannot 
afford  to  blunder.  The  immigrant  has  come  to 
check  us  early,  while  we  still  have  room  to  experi- 
ment. He  is  forcing  us  to  solve  problems  in  the 
small  before  we  are  overwhelmed  by  unforeseen 
deluges. 

What  is  to  be  the  solution  of  the  problem  ?  That  it 
is  the  business  of  every  thoughtful  and  conscientious 
citizen  to  help  find  out.  Highly  organized  democ- 
racies like  ours  have  never  before  survived.  Re- 
publics before  us  have  failed.  There  are  no  prec- 
edents of  success,  therefore ;  the  most  anybody 
knows  as  yet  is  how  not  to  do  the  business.  How 
to  do  it  will  require  the  combined  sagacity  and 
devotion  of  all  to  discover  and  demonstrate. 

Pass  on  to  the  second  lesson  the  foreign  immi- 
grant is  teaching  us.  He  is  bringing  us,  forcing 
us  where  we  do  not  move  willingly,  to  a  truer  inter- 
[59] 


WOBLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

pretation  of  the  Christian  religion.  He  is  uncon- 
sciously offering  the  challenge,  Here,  try  your  re- 
ligion on  me.  He  presses  his  challenge  collect- 
ively with  more  insistence  than  individually,  for 
the  very  reason  that  he  is  so  gregarious. 

Christianity  is  essentially  and  fundamentally  social, 
has  regard  to  the  other  man.  This  challenge  is 
therefore  legitimate.  The  Christian  religion  is  not 
ultimately  concerned  with  our  complacent  individ- 
ualistic experiences,  however  comforting  and  sooth- 
ing such  may  be.  Elaborate  introspective  analyses 
of  how  we  feel  towards  God,  the  punctilious  labelling 
of  our  inner  states  with  mystical  names  may  be 
gratifying  to  those  who  fancy  indulging  in  the  exer- 
cise, but  such  doings  do  not  embody  the  Christian 
religion  nor  reveal  its  essence.  Whence  ever  came 
the  prompting  for  the  prayer  so  often  uttered  in 
public  worship,  "We  thank  Thee,  O  God,  that  Thou 
dost  give  us  the  opportunity  to  withdraw  from  the 
world  to  this  place  where  we  may  find  and  commune 
with  Thee."  The  phrases  we  have  picked  up  some- 
where, but  the  spirit  of  them  certainly  did  not  come 
from  Jesus  Christ.  We  resort  to  our  summer  loung- 
ing places ;  we  revel  in  the  blessed  religious  experi- 
ences of  these  resorts,  Bible  expositions  and  moun- 
tain-top privileges  ;  exploit  our  finely  wrought  doc- 
trines ;  tell  one  another  and  have  eloquent  speakers 
tell  us  how  certain  it  is  that  Moses  wrote  down  every 
word  of  the  Pentateuch  whatever  scholars  and 
scientists  and  historians  or  any  other  atheists  may 
think  about  it — suppose  we  are  entirely  correct, 
and  suppose  we  follow  that  programme  never  so 
zealously,  wherein  have  we  caught  the  meaning  of  the 
[60] 


WHAT  THE  FOREIGNER  IS  TEACHING  US 

Christian  religion  or  embodied  the  spirit  of  Jesus 
Christ  ?  The  truth  is,  much  summer-resort  religion 
has  little  in  it  to  identify  it  with  Christianity.  The 
power  to  redeem  this  throbbing  social  organism 
developing  before  our  eyes  will  never  come  from  lis- 
tening to  hair-splitting  lectures  on  Biblical  interpre- 
tations, nor  even  from  tales  of  saloon  evangelism, 
marvellous  as  the  incidents  may  appear. 

Now,  of  course,  a  vacation  is  a  good  thing  ;  every- 
body ought  to  take  one  occasionally.  Our  summer 
resorts  are  a  good  thing,  and  there  is  no  reason  why 
one  should  not  gain  instruction  and  inspiration  from 
listening  to  lectures  while  on  vacation.  But  to  sup- 
pose that  a  summer's  cramming  of  exhilarations  will 
clarify  religious  insights  is  to  be  deluded.  When 
one  needs  a  rest,  he  ought  to  take  it  by  all  means, 
but  to  mistake  a  pathological  condition  for  a  relig- 
ious craving,  and  to  seek  to  make  individualistic  ex- 
hilarations satisfy  that  craving,  is  a  very  serious 
mistake  indeed.  Can  it  appear  for  one  moment  that 
such  a  programme  will  so  much  as  touch  the  insistent 
spiritual  problem  of  our  great  hurrying  cities,  and 
redeem  our  puissant  industrial  civilization  to  God  f 
The  average  man  on  the  streets  knows  or  cares  about 
as  much  for  our  dreamy,  withdrawn-from-the- world 
religion  as  if  it  were  all  being  practiced  by  the  inhab- 
itants of  Mars.  We  announce  that  to  draw  near  to 
God  we  must  withdraw  from  the  world,  and  the 
untutored  man  on  the  street  takes  us  at  our  word, 
and  allows  us  to  withdraw,  religion  and  all.  Surely 
no  one  need  be  reminded  that  such  a  programme  was 
never  mapped  out  by  Jesus  Christ. 

It  will  require  the  power  of  the  religion  of  Christ 
[61] 


WOKLD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

to  redeem  our  civilization,  and  we  above  all  men 
ought  to  be  alive  to  that  fact,  but  many  who  assume 
to  know  best  what  that  religion  is  are  least  prepared 
to  bring  that  power  to  bear.  We  are  placed  in  a 
serious  situation.  The  hustling,  matter-of-fact  immi- 
grant foreigner  is  putting  our  Christianity  to  the  test, 
and  our  Christianity  is  found  wanting, — which  is 
clear  enough  demonstration  that  we  have  not  got  the 
true  religion  of  Jesus  Christ. 

I  remarked  that  true  Christianity  is  essentially 
social.  Further,  it  is  democratic.  Men  and  women 
will  never  be  patronized  into  the  kingdom  of  God. 
Much  of  our  missionary  zeal  has  exhausted  itself  in 
pitying  the  poor,  benighted  heathen.  If  only  some 
one  should  carry  the  gospel  light  to  them,  how  happy 
they  must  be  !  God  has  brought  some  of  the  heathen 
close  up  to  us,  to  enable  us  to  determine  how  correct 
are  our  conceptions,  how  clear  is  this  gospel  light 
which  we  supposed  we  had  to  disseminate.  This  ex- 
perience ought  to  correct  many  an  erroneous  notion. 
The  foreigner,  the  brother-man  seen  in  such  a  delusive 
light  at  the  great  distance,  when  brought  close  up  will 
make  the  missionary  enterprise  seem  a  very  different 
thing  from  what  some  had  supposed  it.  Perhaps  we 
shall  learn,  by  not  over-gentle  experiences,  what  sort 
of  Christianity  it  actually  is  which  shall  redeem  the 
world  to  God.  Can  your  religion  make  good,  can 
your  Christianity  do  the  business?  That  is  the 
uncouth  question  which  the  foreign  immigrant  has 
come  close  up  in  his  frank  way  to  ask.  And  it  is  an 
exceedingly  important  question.  It  makes  literally 
a  world  of  difference  what  we  have  to  reply.  We 
would  best  not  talk  too  loudly  about  saving  the  world 
[62] 


WHAT  THE  FOBEIGNER  IS  TEACHING  US 

unless  we  can  make  straightforward  reply  to  that 
question. 

Such  questions  as  these  the  foreigner  amongst  us 
has  not  created  de  novo.  The  situation  he  has  pro- 
duced by  his  coming  is  not  an  accident  of  this  par- 
ticular time  and  place.  These  are  eternal  issues. 
Facing  them  is  a  matter  of  dateless  importance. 
Their  coming  to  light  and  pressing  to  the  fore  is  coin- 
cident with  the  immigrant's  coming,  the  foreigner  is 
making  us  think  about  them,  he  is  making  them  the 
importunate  problems  of  the  time,  but  we  had  to  face 
them  and  deal  with  them  sooner  or  later  anyway. 
And,  as  already  remarked,  we  ought  to  thank  the 
foreigner,  rather  than  denounce  him,  because  he  has 
compelled  us  to  attend  to  them  sooner  rather  than 
later,  when  it  might  be  too  late. 

This  is  not  showing  how  the  immigration  problem  is 
to  be  solved.  Almost  everybody  has  underestimated 
the  task.  Many  have  supposed  it  simply  a  matter  of 
preaching  the  pure  Gospel,  as  the  phrase  goes.  If 
only  somebody  could  be  found  who  could  preach  to 
them  ;  perhaps  some  suppose  that  all  needed  is  a 
corps  of  ministers  who  can  speak  their  various 
languages.  Doubtless  that  is  a  great  need.  Sut 
though  ten  thousand  Chry sostoms  might  be  at  call  able 
to  ring  out  their  eloquence  in  all  the  languages  of  the 
earth,  their  effort  would  be  next  to  futile  without 
our  clear  understanding  of  these  weightier  considera- 
tions I  have  referred  to,  and  our  determined  readiness 
to  meet  these  demands.  First  of  all,  are  we  sure 
we  know  what  the  Gospel  of  Christ  is?  That  we 
must  find  out  before  we  can  preach  it.  Though  we 
speak  with  the  tongues  of  men  and  of  angels  and  have 
[63] 


WOELD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

not  love,  have  not  the  wisdom  which  conies  of  a  deep 
sense  of  the  human  brotherhood,  our  preaching,  in 
how  many  so  ever  languages,  is  but  sounding  brass 
and  a  clanging  cymbal.  There  is  just  one  language 
in  which  this  problem  is  to  be  solved,  the  universal 
language  of  love  and  human  brotherhood  spoken 
clearly  both  in  church  and  state,  in  practice  and  deep 
in  life  purposes. 


[64] 


THE    DIFFERENCE    BETWEEN    FACTS    AND 
PRINCIPLES 

A  familiar  legend  runs  to  the  effect  that  once 
upon  a  time  a  great  boulder  lay  upon  a  certain 
highroad.  It  interfered  seriously  with  the  traffic. 
To  avoid  the  obstruction  travellers  were  compelled 
to  make  an  annoying  detour  each  time  they  passed 
that  way.  Aggravating  as  it  was  the  community 
complacently  settled  down  to  the  acceptance  of  the 
situation.  Stern  necessity  was  thought  to  make 
complacency  the  only  logic.  One  day  a  traveller 
who  must  often  pass  that  way  reached  the  limit  of 
his  patience,  climbed  down  from  his  vehicle,  put 
to  the  task  the  utmost  of  his  strength,  and  rolled 
the  stone  out  of  the  passage,  affording  a  straight 
course  for  the  highway. 

The  story  adds  further  details  which  have  only 
incidental  connection  here,  to  the  effect  that  under 
the  stone  there  was  revealed  a  bag  of  gold.  It  had 
been  placed  there  by  the  lord  of  that  domain,  ex- 
pressly designated  as  the  reward  of  the  traveller 
who  should  perform  this  timely  service  for  the 
community.  And  the  legend  runs  on  still  further 
to  report  that,  for  a  considerable  season  thereafter, 
there  was  a  prodigious  scampering  of  adventurers 
throughout  all  that  region  who  quite  marred  the  land- 
scape with  their  persistent  rolling  over  of  stones  here, 
[65] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

there  and  everywhere  in  the  search  for  other  bags 
of  gold.  Of  course,  no  others  were  found.  It  was 
only  underneath  the  stone  which  obstructed  the  high- 
way that  the  lord  of  the  domain  had  placed  the 
gold,  intending  it  not  as  the  bauble  of  idle  adven- 
ture, but  as  the  reward  of  timely  service  to  the  com- 
munity. 

As  before  remarked,  however,  it  is  only  inciden- 
tally that  we  are  here  concerned  with  the  later  de- 
velopments of  the  story.  Mark  the  main  point. 
If  we  are  short-sighted  in  our  purposes  or  indolent 
in  our  thinking,  it  is  easy  to  mistake  more  or  less 
obstinate  facts  for  enduring  principles  and  eternal 
truths.  We  fall  into  the  habit  of  taking  conditions 
for  necessary  because  they  exist,  and,  once  conclud- 
ing them  necessary,  we  settle  down  to  the  compla- 
cent acceptance  of  them  for  good  and  for  all.  Be- 
cause obstacles  are  in  the  way  we  indolently  adjust 
ourselves  to  what  we  take  to  be  the  inevitable,  and 
continue  indefinitely  to  make  the  annoying  detour  in 
our  journey. 

It  is  both  curious  and  pathetic,  the  manner  in 
which  this  tendency  has  been  revealed  in  history. 
Men  have  sought  and  supposed  they  found  in  Scrip- 
ture itself  the  warrant  of  the  divine  fiat  for  some  of 
the  most  outlandish  practices,  and  for  the  most  ri- 
diculous acceptance  of  bad  conditions.  There  is  the 
case  of  the  witch  chasers.  Of  course  there  were 
witches,  because  they  are  mentioned  in  the  Bible, 
and,  equally  of  course,  when  they  afflicted  the  com- 
munity there  was  only  to  drown  them  or  burn  them 
or  banish  them.  The  slavery  of  the  black  man  was 
not  only  justified  by  an  appeal  to  Scripture  but  was 
[66] 


FACTS  AND  PRINCIPLES 

maintained  as  inevitable,  a  moral  and  spiritual  ne- 
cessity in  the  proper  ordering  of  human  society. 
There  is  a  lingering  conviction  in  some  quarters  to 
that  effect  still.  Many  of  the  most  eloquent  preach- 
ers of  fifty  and  sixty  years  ago  could  demonstrate 
beyond  a  peradventure  that  God  Almighty  had  or- 
dained that  the  black  man  should  be  held  in  perpet- 
ual slavery.  That  principle  was  one  of  the  corner- 
stones of  human  society.  It  was  as  inevitable  as 
the  ordering  of  the  moral  universe.  And,  I  repeat, 
fragments  of  that  conviction  still  linger  here  and 
there.  Once  in  a  while  even  now  one  meets  men 
and  women  who  appeal  to  Scripture  to  prove  that 
a  position  of  servility  and  social  inferiority  is  the 
natural  and  inevitable  lot  of  the  descendants  of  Ham. 
And,  to  be  sure,  we  have  by  painful  experiences 
discovered  much  which  was  not  apprehended  by  the 
enthusiasts  of  the  days  of  reconstruction  just  follow- 
ing the  Civil  War.  Few  understood  what  peculiarly 
obstinate  facts  can  be  created  through  a  thousand 
generations  of  tropical  savagery  and  three  hundred 
years  of  actual  slavery.  Many  of  those  facts  are  now 
coming  to  light ;  reformers  and  enthusiasts  are  coming 
to  realize  the  obstinacy  of  such  facts.  The  Negro 
race  is  inferior  :  it  would  be  the  most  unnatural 
thing  in  the  world  if  it  were  not  inferior.  It  is 
always  well  to  face  the  facts.  But  mere  facts,  how- 
ever obstinate,  ought  not  to  be  allowed  to  consti- 
tute themselves  eternal  principles.  The  fact  that  a 
race  is  inferior  can  go  only  as  far  as  any  fact  goes. 
The  fiat  of  Almighty  God  has  not  doomed  the  Ne- 
gro or  any  other  race  to  servility  and  social  degra- 
dation. It  is  not  fighting  against  God  to  undo  ob- 
[67] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

noxious  facts,  however  obstinate.  It  is  quite  the 
contrary  :  it  is  fighting  with  God.  Take  that  as  an 
offhand  definition  of  the  divine  campaign  which  is 
eternally  on  :  it  is  the  undoing  of  obnoxious  facts, 
the  unmaking  of  bad  conditions. 

Now,  note  particularly  two  illustrations  of  this 
truth  ;  each  can  supply  a  hundred  other  illustrations 
from  his  own  experience  and  thinking. 

Jesus  made  this  remark  on  a  notable  occasion : 
"The  poor  ye  have  always  with  you."  Three  times 
the  incident  is  reported  in  the  Gospels  which  called 
forth  that  remark  :  "The  poor  ye  have  always  with 
you."  The  point  I  wish  to  make  just  now  is  that 
the  remark  upon  even  so  peculiarly  obstinate  a  fact  as 
this  does  not  commit  Jesus  and  has  no  business  com- 
mitting any  one  to  the  acceptance  of  poverty  in 
human  society  as  inevitable  and  necessary.  There 
are  indeed  few  more  obstinate  facts  in  the  experience 
of  human  society  than  just  this.  Poverty  certainly 
always  has  been  ;  I  hope  we  are  not  indolent  enough 
either  in  our  thinking  or  in  our  action  to  conclude 
that  it  therefore  always  will  be.  A  definite  case  is 
made  of  this  not  alone  because  it  is  a  matter  of  such 
transcendent  economic  and  social  importance  in  our 
day,  but  because  we  are  allowing  ourselves  to  got 
into  such  a  spiritual  muddle  at  this  point.  It  is 
oftentimes  complacently  maintained  that  poverty  is 
a  sort  of  religious  necessity  in  the  social  organism. 
The  most  of  us  are  consciously  or  unconsciously  af- 
fected by  that  theory.  Some  theology  deliberately 
maintains  the  poor  to  furnish  that  upon  which 
the  well-to-do  may  practice  the  Christian  virtues. 
Doubtless  that  theology  in  its  bald  form  is  not  now 
[68] 


FACTS  AND  PRINCIPLES 

in  vogue  as  a  theory,  but  iu  practice  we  are  very 
slow  in  getting  away  from  it.  What  would  there  be 
left  for  the  Church  to  do,  as  the  Church  uow  most 
vividly  conceives  itself,  if  there  were  no  poor  to  pro- 
vide charity  for,  to  build  missions  for,  to  favour  with 
a  modicum  of  our  combined  and  aggregated  patron- 
age ?  In  short,  what  would  become  of  our  profes- 
sional Christian  virtues  if  poverty  were  abolished 
from  human  society  %  Do  not  our  religious  institu- 
tions and  our  religious  theories  consciously  or  uncon- 
sciously claim  poverty  as  a  religious  necessity  ? 
Poverty  as  a  fact  Jesus  was  very  prompt  to  accept, 
and  poverty  as  a  fact  the  Christian  religion  may  well 
accommodate  itself  to.  But  it  would  be  a  most  de- 
plorable issue  if  Jesus  and  the  Christian  religion 
were  made  to  commit  themselves,  as  to  a  necessary 
principle,  to  what  calls  in  our  day  by  all  that  is  holy 
and  human  for  abolition  and  eradication. 

The  abolition  of  poverty  is  now  at  least  a  mathe- 
matical possibility.  Only  now  has  it  become  such. 
Up  to  recently  there  simply  was  not  enough  food 
produced  to  keep  all  from  starving.  The  arts  of 
food  production  were  far  behind  the  vital  necessities. 
It  was  inevitable  that  somebody  should  go  hungry. 
There  were  too  many  mouths  to  fill  to  allow  the  sup- 
plies of  the  public  larder  to  go  all  the  way  round. 
That  is  now  happily  untrue.  In  this  country  at 
least,  mathematically  speaking,  there  is  no  reason  why 
any  man,  woman  or  child  should  go  hungry.  Yet 
of  course  everybody  knows  that  poverty  is  our  great 
social  scourge  ;  thousands  are  perishing  for  the  lack 
of  daily  food  and  shelter.  And  when  some  high- 
flying socialist  comes  along  with  a  fine-spun  method 
[69] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

of  distributing  the  acknowledged  supply  so  that  all 
may  share  in  it  on  some  equitable  basis,  what  is  the 
stock  argument  by  which  we  think  to  reduce  him  to 
speechless  confusion?  His  scheme  will  not  work. 
But  why  will  it  not  work  ? 

We  shall  not  enter  the  arena  of  this  modern  war- 
fare. Let  the  fine- spun  theories  of  socialism  spin  on. 
The  point  is  that  poverty  can  claim  no  virtue  from 
necessity.  God  does  not  ordain  poverty.  It  is  not 
created  by  a  law  of  nature.  You  may  silence  the 
haranguing  socialist  with  asserting  that  an  equal  dis- 
tribution of  property  to-day  would  be  destroyed  to- 
morrow by  the  indolence  and  moral  inability  of  the 
people  themselves.  That  is  doubtless  a  fact  which 
past  experience  would  seem  conclusively  to  demon- 
strate as  a  fact,  but  there  is  no  religious  necessity  in 
the  fact.  Let  the  fact  be  never  so  obstinate,  it  has 
nothing  of  the  value  of  an  eternal  principle.  Let  us 
by  all  means  relieve  Jesus  of  Nazareth  of  the  reputa- 
tion of  defending  by  any  implication  whatsoever  the 
distressing  social  and  economic  inequities  of  our 
present-day  society. 

Religion  does  not  need  to  feed  upon  charities. 
Religion  would  on  the  contrary  thrive  far  more 
healthily  if  there  were  no  devastating  poverty  to  call 
for  organized  or  unorganized  charity.  So  long  as  one 
class  of  society  continues  to  get  its  religious  satisfac- 
tion from  patronizing  and  doling  out  benefactions  to 
another  class  of  society  religion  is  bound  to  develop 
unwholesomely.  Wrong  conceptions  of  God  are 
certain  to  prevail  and  false  relations  between  man 
and  man  sap  religion  of  its  vitality.  So  far  from 
being  a  religious  necessity,  poverty  is  to-day  the 
[70] 


FACTS  AND  PRINCIPLES 

millstone  hanged  about  the  neck  of  organized  religion, 
threatening  to  sink  our  religious  institutions  into 
the  abyss.  As  surely  as  we  claim  to  be  a  Christian 
people  we  have  got  this  bane  of  our  society  to  abolish. 
The  other  illustration  of  the  point  at  issue  which 
I  wish  to  make  lies  not  very  far  along.  Another 
pertinent  text  of  Scripture  is  found  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, in  the  writings  of  a  prophet  who  had  a  knack 
of  discovering  the  deep  badness  of  things.  A  notable 
and  notorious  remark  of  his  is  translated  in  our  older 
English  version,  "The  heart  is  deceitful  above  all 
things,  and  desperately  wicked. ' '  That  is  a  profound 
observation.  It  presents  a  fact  the  most  stubborn 
which  the  forces  of  human  salvation  have  to  en- 
counter. But  my  point  is  that  it  is  a  fact,  not  an 
eternal  principle  nor  an  enduring  necessity.  Of 
course  no  one  who  believes  in  the  salvability  of 
human  nature  at  all  will  maintain  that  it  is  an  in- 
flexible principle.  The  whole  Christian  scheme  of 
things  implies  that  the  heart  is  capable  of  becoming 
something  other  than  deceitful,  and  that  men  should 
become  something  other  than  desperately  wicked. 
But  my  point  is  that  all  of  us  are  inclined  to  stand 
with  far  too  great  complacency  before  this  obstinate 
fact.  The  religious  calm  with  which  we  often  accept 
the  perversities  and  degeneracy  of  human  nature  is 
quite  subversive  of  true  religion.  Everything  on  earth 
which  goes  wrong  is  likely  at  last  to  be  laid  up  to 
human  depravity,  and,  once  we  can  justify  ourselves 
in  making  that  observation,  the  whole  story  is  told, 
the  argument  is  closed,  there  is  nothing  more  to  say. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  we  have  then  only  reached  the 
beginning.  It  does  not  satisfactorily  explain  and 
[71] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

justify  bad  conditions  to  say  that  human  nature  is  bad. 
It  is  the  business  of  human  nature  to  be  good,  what- 
ever be  the  fact  and  it  is  precisely  our  business  to  see 
that  it  is  good  and  that  all  the  conditions  of  human 
society  are  good  along  with  it. 

Abundant  evidence  is  now  accumulating  of  the 
inadequacy  of  our  redemptive  methods.  A  police 
commissioner  in  New  York  City  resigned  not  long 
since  or  was  removed.  On  retiring  he  pointed  with 
pride  to  his  record  and  the  conduct  of  his  office.  It 
is  a  remarkable  record.  There  were  more  arrests 
and  prosecutions  for  crime  than  ever  before  in  the 
history  of  the  city.  That  is  doubtless  a  complimen- 
tary showing  for  the  police  department,  but  by  the 
same  token  it  is  exceedingly  uncomplimentary  to  the 
city  and  the  forces  which  are  supposed  to  make  for 
righteousness.  The  record  is  not  without  its  sugges- 
tion that  there  has  been  more  cause  than  ever  before 
for  making  arrests  and  conducting  prosecutions. 
The  challenge  now  being  so  conspicuously  offered 
the  redemptive  forces  of  society  is  well  timed  : 
This  work  of  reclaiming  men  from  the  gutter  is  beau- 
tiful, doubtless,  but  the  gutter  is  not  beautiful.  Is 
not  the  gutter  too  expensive  an  institution  to  main- 
tain 1  Does  it  pay  for  itself  in  the  religious  satisfac- 
tion to  be  got  from  pulling  men  out  of  it1?  Does  not 
the  most  of  our  redemptive  work  consist  in  fixing  up 
after  a  certain  fashion  a  bad  mess  which  ought  never 
to  have  been  allowed  to  develop  %  We  are  expert  at 
the  salvage  business,  but  are  we  really  up  to  the 
saving  business  1  I  once  knew  a  doctor  who  was 
very  insecure  in  his  diagnosis  of  the  most  of  diseases. 
Any  complication  was  likely  to  throw  him  off  his 
[72] 


FACTS  AND  PRINCIPLES 

bearings.  He  practiced  in  a  malarial  country.  And 
bis  uniform  procedure,  whatever  might  be  the 
malady,  was  to  administer  calomel  till  be  bad  got  bis 
patient  thoroughly  well  salivated,  when  be  was  on 
safe  ground,  for  salivation  be  understood  and  could 
treat. 

In  somewhat  similar  fashion,  we  still  do  despite  to 
the  grace  of  God  by  our  redemptive  methods.  Once 
a  man  is  in  the  gutter,  we  know  j  ust  what  to  do  next. 
The  machinery  is  in  operation  to  suit  the  case.  We 
are  expert  at  rescue  work.  If  the  vice-mill  will  only 
continue  grinding  out  its  grist  there  will  always  be 
abundant  material  on  which  our  redemptive  machin- 
ery can  operate.  That  is  to  say,  the  vice-mill  is  a 
sort  of  religious  necessity.  If  we  can  get  men  des- 
perately wicked,  we  know  just  how  the  grace  of  God 
operates  for  their  redemption. 

Of  course  that  is  reducing  the  situation  to  the 
ridiculous,  but  even  grace  does  not  stay  us  always 
from  becoming  ridiculous.  Is  not  the  motive  and 
aim  of  much  of  our  religious  activity  a  work  of  sal- 
vage and  far  too  little  the  work  of  salvation  ?  It  is 
easy  to  arouse  interest  in  and  collect  money  for  res- 
cue, salvage  enterprises,  but  when  it  comes  to  the 
real  work  of  salvation,  keeping  men  and  women  out 
of  the  gutter  in  the  first  place, — well,  it  is  all  too  true 
that  the  vice-mill  is  accepted  as  a  religious  necessity  ; 
if  we  cannot  get  men  desperately  wicked  we  scarcely 
know  how  to  bring  a  process  of  grace  to  bear  upon 
them.  And  yet  it  may  be  asserted  with  the  utmost 
emphasis  that  the  first  demand  to-day  of  religion, 
pure  and  undefined,  is  the  abolition  of  the  vice-mill. 
Religious  sentiments  and  religious  institutions  which 
[73] 


WOELD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

are  appealed  to  only  by  the  gruesome  product  of  our 
moderu  social  abuses  are  least  of  all  worthy  of  the 
sanction  of  true  religion.  Eeligion,  to  be  its  real  self, 
has  got  to  prompt  us  to  keep  men  out  of  the  gutter, 
not  to  salve  us  with  satisfaction  for  having  pulled 
them  out  after  we  have  pushed  them  in. 

That  is  brief  allusion  to  two  illustrations  of  the 
truth  emphasized.  There  is  quite  as  much  profit 
doubtless  in  calling  up  the  hundred  other  illustrations 
which  each  can  supply  from  his  own  thinking.  At 
every  turn  we  are  extracting  the  virtue  of  necessity 
from  bad  conditions  which  are  not  necessary  at  all. 
There  is  no  virtue  in  the  dull  endurance  of  what 
ought  to  be  corrected  and  abolished.  A  lot  of  what 
we  mistake  for  holy  resignation  to  the  divine  will  is 
in  terser  phrase  our  precious  indolence.  In  the  re- 
port of  a  missionary  some  time  ago  there  was  a  para- 
graph which  read  like  this  :  u  As  I  sit  here  writing 
in  my  home  I  can  gaze  aloft  and  see  the  blue  sky 
through  the  holes  in  the  roof,  and,  looking  down- 
ward, can  observe  through  the  cracks  in  the  floor  the 
greedy  swine  rooting  in  the  soil  beneath  the  house." 
It  occurs  to  the  practical  mind  at  once  that  the  good 
man  might  have  dropped  his  pen  long  enough  at 
least  to  drive  the  pigs  out  of  the  yard  even  if  he 
could  not  repair  the  roof.  The  family  with  a  heap 
of  garbage  rotting  at  the  back  door  need  not  wonder 
long  over  the  inscrutable  providence  which  sends  the 
scourge  of  typhoid. 

We  set  great  store  in  our  devotional  moments  by 
the  ills  of  our  lives  which  test  our  spirit  of  resigna- 
tion or  afford  the  opportunity  of  sacrifice.  But  there 
is  no  religious  or  other  value  in  needless  sacrifice. 
[74] 


FACTS  AND  PRINCIPLES 

Self-sacrifice  for  the  sake  of  self-sacrifice  is  at  best  a 
species  of  spiritual  priggishness.  The  Apostle  Paul 
has  a  cutting  remark  to  make  about  the  "show  of 
wisdom  "  in  will- worship.  In  another  place  he  draws 
a  sharp  distinction  between  godly  sorrow,  and  other 
kinds  of  sorrow.  Godly  sorrow  is  immensely  prof- 
itable in  that  it  puts  one  right  with  God,  but  the  other 
sort  of  sorrow  he  is  frank  to  declare  works  only 
death.  Cultivating  grit  for  the  grit's  sake  is  about 
the  most  thankless  task  a  man  ever  set  himself  to, 
and  about  the  least  godly.  Grit  is  a  mighty  valuable 
article  when  it  comes  as  a  by-product,  but  a  grit 
factory — well,  that  is  another  name  for  a  stone- 
crusher,  and  it  is  not  a  fit  symbol  for  the  wholesome 
human  life. 

It  may  be  proper  to  recall  by  this  time  that,  in  the 
parable  with  which  we  began,  adventurers  scampered 
through  all  the  region  in  the  search  of  stones  which 
they  might  overturn.  They  foolishly  supposed  bags 
of  gold  would  be  found  beneath  them  also.  But  only 
under  the  stone  which  obstructed  the  highroad  lay 
the  reward  of  straining  effort.  Racing  about  over 
the  hills  in  out-of-the-way  places  to  roll  over  stones 
which  are  in  nobody's  way  and  never  will  be  in  any- 
body's way  only  disfigures  the  landscape  with  ghastly 
scars.  Seeking  virtue  by  profitless  deprivations, 
grinding  through  a  succession  of  meaningless  religious 
exercises,  feverishly  perpetuating  activities  which 
have  lost  all  significance  of  piety, — that  may  be  of 
value  in  the  maintenance  of  will- worship,  but  it  is 
the  very  subversion  of  true  religion.  Religion  exacts 
strain,  but  demands  that  the  strain  shall  be  made  to 
some  worthy  end.  It  sets  us  at  the  task  of  overturn- 
[75] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

ing  stones  so  ponderous  that  all  other  forces  will  balk 
before  the  effort,  but  it  is  careful  to  point  out  the 
stones  obstructing  the  highway  and  not  those  beauti- 
fying the  landscape  on  some  remote  hillside. 

I  hope  we  shall  not  miss  the  main  point.  It  is 
neither  good  common-sense  nor  is  it  good  religion  to 
go  on  forever  detouring  obstructions  to  progress. 
Least  of  all  does  religion  set  up  and  maiutain  such 
obstacles.  Because  Jesus  and  the  apostles  and  the 
prophets  were  compelled  to  face  and  to  accept  certain 
obstinate  facts,  it  does  not  follow  that  we  also  should 
placidly  accept  those  facts.  No  mere  fact  has  any 
business  being  exalted  into  the  place  of  an  eternal 
principle.  To  do  that  thing  is  not  good  religion  ; 
it  is  the  essence  of  irreligion.  There  are  several 
bad  conditions  in  our  society  which  have  got  now  to 
be  corrected.  It  makes  no  difference  how  compla- 
cently they  have  been  accepted  in  the  past.  Though 
all  the  generations,  pious  and  otherwise,  may  have 
taken  them  for  necessary,  yet  for  us  they  are  not  nec- 
essary. Since  they  are  bad  and  not  necessary  all  the 
sanctities  of  religion  demand  their  eradication,  their 
abolition,  and  religious  institutions  and  sentiments 
are  doomed  which  do  not  address  themselves  to  the 
business.  Though  such  conditions  may  have  been 
wrought  into  the  social  fabric  through  all  the  ages 
clean  back  to  Adam  and  Eve  as  they  stepped  out  of  the 
Garden  of  Eden,  yet  do  they  not  belong  in  our  social 
organism,  and  failure  to  eradicate  them  by  processes 
which  go  to  the  roots  of  things  will  bring  us  and  our 
redemptive  agencies  under  a  moral  and  spiritual 
curse. 

It  is  the  glory  of  religion  that  it  has  inspired  men 
[76] 


FACTS  AND  PRINCIPLES 

to  attempt  and  achieve  the  uttermost ;  it  has  nerved 
them  to  do  what  by  all  the  laws  of  likelihood  is  im- 
possible. The  modem  scientific  spirit  when  sancti- 
fied by  reverence  is  potent  to  the  same  end.  It  stands 
undaunted  and  unafraid.  It  says,  These  strongholds 
of  evil  must  yield  as  others  before  them  have  fallen. 
If  we  have  got  the  first  infusion  of  the  reverent  scien- 
tific spirit,  if  we  have  sounded  even  the  shallows  of 
religion's  essential  puissance  we  shall  have  no  doubt 
that  what  now  puts  its  blight  upon  our  civilization 
and  shames  us  before  God  and  men  can  be  corrected. 
It  is  a  spiueless  science  and  a  pettifogging  religion 
which  balks  before  tasks  even  so  vast  and  difficult. 
This  is  what  faith  in  God  is  for,  to  make  us  sure  that 
what  is  bad  can  be  conquered,  to  give  us  a  conscience 
restless  until  the  bad  is  conquered. 


[77] 


VI 

HOME  MISSIONS  AND  SPIRITUAL 
WOELD  CONQUEST 

World  citizenship  is  the  only  sort  of  citizenship 
which  is  finally  worthy  of  the  Christian.  The  genius 
of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  on  earth  exacts  that  sort. 
There  can  be  no  difference  between  home  and  foreign 
missions  on  that  score.  Home  missions  is  not  narrow 
and  foreign  missions  broad  ;  home  missions  is  not  a 
provincial  or  merely  national  economy  while  foreign 
missions  hold  in  monopoly  a  world  enterprise.  The 
difference,  if  there  is  an  essential  difference,  is  one  of 
method  in  the  approach  to  the  same  comprehensive, 
universal  responsibility. 

The  philosophy  of  our  times  is  drawing  ever  more 
clear  lines  of  distinction  between  an  individualistic 
scheme  and  the  social  interpretation  of  life,  the  so- 
cial measurement  of  values.  One  does  not  need  to  be 
a  political  socialist  to  discern  this  distinction.  He 
may  indeed  be  zealous  to  accept  and  propagate  the 
deeper  conception  of  the  spiritual  economy  and  the 
truer  interpretation  of  the  Gospel  which  comes  with 
the  social  vision,  while  he  vigorously  repudiates  the 
accepted  tenets  of  political  socialism.  Thoughtful 
students  of  present  day  spiritual  movements  will  find 
it  more  and  more  apparent  that  these  two  conceptions 
of  the  spiritual  enterprise  furnish  the  lines  of  real 
demarcation  among  missionary  forces.  Individual- 
ists lean  towards  the  "foreign  mission"  method  of 
[78] 


SPIRITUAL  WORLD  CONQUEST 

approach  to  the  world-wide  enterprise,  and  those 
who  have  caught  the  social  vision  of  the  Gospel's 
meaning  incline  towards  making  "home  missions" 
the  method  of  that  approach.  Such  minor  considera- 
tions as  whether  the  so-called  institutional  church  is 
a  success,  how  much  politics  should  be  introduced 
into  preaching,  how  often  a  minister  should  intro- 
duce the  subject  of  temperance  or  any  other  phase  of 
social  virtue  or  vice, — those  questions  are  superficial 
and  do  not  measure  the  significance  of  the  distinction 
pointed  out. 

Are  individuals  or  are  communities  and  nations 
the  final  units  of  the  divine  economy  ?  That  is  one 
of  the  deep  questions.  Which  is  the  more  potent 
method  of  reaching  world  spiritual  need  :  the  sending 
out  of  individuals  here  and  there,  scattered  to  the 
uttermost  parts,  or  the  marshalling  of  a  vigorous  and 
growing  nation  with  all  the  forces  of  an  already 
dominant  civilization  for  properly  qualified  leader- 
ship in  world  movements !  That  question  comes  at 
the  heart  of  the  difference,  so  far  as  there  is  a  differ- 
ence. By  its  genius  the  foreign  mission  propaganda 
is  more  or  less  consistently  committed  to  the  former 
method,  and  home  missions,  so  far  as  they  are  true  to 
their  genius,  are  zealous  in  the  latter  method. 

Mr.  Roosevelt  has  said  nothing  more  profound  than 
that  which  has  been  frequently  upon  his  lips  since 
his  return  from  his  recent  protracted  sojourn  abroad. 
He  shows  by  his  every  utterance  how  deeply  his 
sentiments  of  personal  world  citizenship  have  been 
stirred,  and  makes  no  word  more  emphatic  than  the 
conviction  that  that  man  is  the  best  world  citizen 
who  is  the  best  citizen  of  the  nation  to  which  he  be- 
[79] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  PROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

longs.  He  assures  all  that  he  returns  to  do  his  ut- 
most to  help  in  the  solution  of  our  present-day  com- 
plicated social  and  political  and  economic  problems. 
One  need  not  accept  with  complete  cordiality  Mr. 
Roosevelt's  conception  of  what  the  true  solution  of 
those  problems  is  to  appreciate  the  worth  of  the  doc- 
trine of  world  citizenship  which  he  sets  forth  so 
clearly  and  forcefully. 

Jingoism  is  of  course  wholly  unworthy  any  one  who 
lays  claim  to  world  citizenship.  No  nation  exists  to 
prey  upon  its  fellows  in  the  world  economy.  Each 
can  be  properly  conceived  only  in  the  terms  of  serv- 
iceableness  to  the  world's  need  ;  each  gains  its  greatest 
dignity  as  an  instrument  of  good  to  humanity  as  a 
whole.  And  what  a  mighty  instrument  of  good  the 
American  nation  may  to-day  become  in  the  world 
economy  if  it  shall  be  intelligently  and  in  good  con- 
science used  to  that  end  !  No  aggregation  of  indi- 
viduals, though  they  be  so  numerous  that  only  the 
world  itself  might  contain  them,  could  perform  so 
potent  an  office  as  that  the  logic  of  present-day 
movements  commits  to  us  as  a  whole  people  acting 
as  a  whole.  As  a  great  spiritual  organism  we  are 
worth  ten  thousand  times  more  to  the  world  than  we 
could  be  as  a  rabble  of  individuals.  Home  missions, 
in  just  the  degree  in  which  the  cause  takes  itself 
seriously,  is  seeking  to  perfect  this  incomparably 
potent  organism. 

An  illustration  from  the  educational  world  will 
prove  illuminating.  No  influence  has  been  more  pro- 
found in  shaping  recent  developments  in  the  Ameri- 
can system  of  higher  education  than  that  of  the  Ger- 
man university.  Not  only  has  this  influence  been 
[80] 


SPIRITUAL  WORLD  CONQUEST 

remarkably  profound  but  the  development  has  been 
very  rapid.  What  has  been  the  method  !  The  Ger- 
man universities  have  not  sent  propagandists  to 
America  to  exploit  the  German  system.  Such  a  case 
as  that  of  Prof.  Hugo  Muusterberg,  of  Harvard,  has 
been  very  rare.  He  is  a  German,  trained  in  the 
German  universities,  and  he  is  a  powerful  force  in 
our  present  American  educational  world.  But  he 
was  not  sent  as  a  propagandist ;  he  was  called  to  his 
Harvard  professorship  upon  Harvard's  initiative  be- 
cause Harvard  was  intelligently  conscious  of  desiring 
the  splendid  impetus  to  her  scholarly  life  which  he 
has  contributed.  And  even  he,  splendid  as  has  been 
his  service,  does  not  embody  in  himself,  or  so  much 
as  represent,  the  real  force  which  has  done  so  much 
to  Germanize  American  educatiou.  German  educa- 
tional ideals  won  their  real  conquest  in  America  by 
perfecting  in  the  German  universities  themselves  that 
superior  scholarship  which  has  for  two  generations 
attracted  American  students  to  their  faculties  veri- 
tably in  crowds.  These  students  have  returned  to 
professorships  and  other  positions  of  leadership  in 
our  American  colleges  and  universities,  and  through 
them  has  gone  forward  the  profound  Germanizing 
process  which  has  been  so  marked  throughout  this 
country.  Here  again,  one  need  not  be  wholly  com- 
mitted to  the  German  ideals  of  education  to  discern 
the  potency  of  the  method  employed. 

But  the  Germanizing  of  our  American  educational 
system  has  not  been  due  to  a  definite  and  conscious 
effort  on  the  part  of  German  educators.  They  and  all 
concerned  have  simply  fallen  in  with  the  play  of  a 
natural  force,  which,  by  the  way,  as  the  world  is  now 
[81] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

constituted,  will  operate  infallibly  even  though  it  be 
given  no  conscious  direction.  All  the  world  is  on  the 
lookout  for  u  good  things"  :  all  any  people  need  do 
to  make  themselves  a  missionary  force  in  our  present 
world  is  to  develop  a  high  standard  of  national  life, 
and  the  whole  world  will  come  to  sit  at  their  feet  to 
learn  their  ways.  But  it  will  be  further  suggestive  to 
note  an  instance  of  the  definite  and  conscious  use 
of  this  method  of  "world  missioning."  Mr.  Cecil 
Rhodes  has  gone  down  in  history  as  an  empire- builder ; 
he  is  said  to  have  thought  in  continents  while  other 
men  were  concerned  with  the  village  gossip.  The 
final  act  of  his  world  statesmanship  is  the  most  sug- 
gestive of  his  career.  He  conceived  that  his  own  be- 
loved Oxford  University  in  England  was  able  to  im- 
part what  world  citizenship  greatly  needed.  One 
method  he  might  have  chosen  to  propagate  what  Ox- 
ford has  to  give  the  world  would  have  been  to  endow 
professorships  in  foreign  universities,  and  provide  the 
support  of  other  offices  of  leadership  among  foreign 
communities,  to  be  occupied  by  Englishmen  trained 
in  Oxford.  The  method  he  actually  chose,  however, 
thereby  revealing  his  consummate  statesmanship,  was 
to  establish  in  Oxford  scholarships  and  fellowships  for 
the  benefit  of  young  men  chosen  from  among  the 
foreign  communities  he  sought  to  reach  with  the  Ox- 
ford spirit  and  ideals.  From  all  the  British  colonies, 
therefore,  and  from  the  United  States,  there  now  go 
up  to  Oxford,  and  there  will  continue  indefinitely  to 
go  up,  the  picked  men  of  their  coming  civilizations, 
who  will  return,  are  already  beginning  to  return,  to 
their  former  homes,  to  disseminate  the  Oxford 
ideas  with  infinitely  more  force  and  intelligence 
[82] 


SPIRITUAL  WORLD  CONQUEST 

than  they  could  have  been  conveyed  by  the  other 
method. 

Of  course  no  intelligent  American  need  be  re- 
minded at  length  how  manifold  and  rich  are  the  op- 
portunities now  afforded  our  intellectual  and  spiritual 
agencies  to  do  a  work  of  world-wide  reach  by  this 
same  process.  China  has  dedicated  that  portion  of 
the  war  indemnity  which  we  had  the  grace  and  sense 
of  justice  to  return  to  her,  to  be  used  until  it  is  ex- 
hausted in  the  education  of  the  brightest  and  best  of 
her  youth  in  our  American  colleges,  universities  and 
technical  schools.  Appointments  are  made  with  all 
the  dignity  of  the  government's  formal  action.  Cer- 
tain appointments  have  already  been  made.  Some  of 
these  students  are  already  here.  And  they  will  con- 
tinue to  come  under  this  provision  until  at  least  1940. 

A  foreign  magazine  only  recently  has  analyzed  in 
detail  the  forces  which  are  contributing  to  a  move- 
ment which  some  are  distinguishing  by  the  phrase, 
"  the  Americanization  of  China,"  and  the  writer, 
while  giving  due  credit  to  the  influence  of  our  Ameri- 
can Christian  colleges  established  in  China,  is  care- 
ful to  say  that  this  influence  is  already  overshadowed 
by  that  of  the  powerful  men,  now  risen  to  positions 
of  leadership  in  the  political,  economic  and  social  life 
of  the  empire,  who  got  their  training  as  youths  in  our 
American  institutions  of  learning.  So  much  is  the 
result  of  the  incidental,  almost  accidental  effort  of 
those  earlier  unconscious  years.  What  may  not  be 
the  issue  of  the  definite,  intelligent  effort  which  is  now 
being  put  forth  through  this  potent  method, — if  in- 
deed the  effort  shall  be  conducted  intelligently  and 
with  the  full  appreciation  of  its  meaning  1 
[83] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

The  opportunity  thus  made  so  conspicuous  in  the 
case  of  China  is  afforded  us  in  quite  as  real  a  fashion 
elsewhere  throughout  the  world.  Every  South  Ameri- 
can republic  is  sending  eager  students  for  our  schools, 
and  pupils  in  our  various  lines  of  artisanship. 
Europe  and  Asia  are  vying  with  each  other  in  seeking 
at  close  range  the  best  we  have  to  offer.  At  one  time 
a  few  years  ago,  a  single  one  of  our  middle  Western 
state  universities  had  in  attendance  seven  Egyptian 
students,  attracted  by  her  superior  agricultural  col- 
lege. A  wide-spread  movement  is  now  sweeping  over 
this  country,  as  among  the  student  population  of 
other  lands,  in  the  organization  of  what  are  known  as 
Cosmopolitan  Clubs.  In  the  most  of  our  American 
universities,  and  in  many  of  our  smaller  colleges  as 
well,  they  have  been  organized  already,  and  they  em- 
brace in  their  membership  representatives  of  every 
nation  under  heaven.  Large  numbers  of  these  stu- 
dents are  here  not  to  remain,  but  to  return,  after  the 
Americanizing  process  has  gone  forward  with  them, 
to  carry  its  values  in  compounded  accumulation  to  all 
peoples  of  the  world. 

Another  impressive  statement  being  repeatedly 
made  by  Mr.  Roosevelt  upon  his  return  is  that  every- 
where he  found  the  peoples  of  other  lands  looking  to 
America  for  leadership  in  those  movements  which 
make  for  the  larger  emancipation  of  humanity, — 
and,  he  regretfully  adds,  he  found  a  growing  feeling 
of  pain  and  disappointment  that  their  expectations 
are  being  so  imperfectly  realized.  There  are  the 
pathos  and  shame  of  the  situation, — for  us.  Here 
is  the  most  direct  and  potent  method  at  our  com- 
mand for  meeting  spiritual  world-need.  The  oppor- 
[84] 


SPIRITUAL  WORLD  CONQUEST 

tunity  extends  far  beyond  the  educational  field.  It 
stands  open  before  every  force  and  influence  of  our 
civilization.  Up  to  now  little  or  no  reckoning  Las 
been  made  of  it.  The  most  of  us  doubtless  still  con- 
ceive of  the  missionary  enterprise  in  the  old  individ- 
ualistic terms  :  the  only  way  to  save  the  world  is  the 
"  one  by  one"  method.  Without  our  planning,  and 
quite  indeed  without  our  realizing  it,  a  Providence 
who  shapes  issues  more  wisely  than  do  we  has  been 
perfecting  a  method  of  world  conquest  which  is  bound 
to  succeed  if  it  is  adequately  worked.  By  the  same 
token  He  is  revealing  the  essential  inadequacy  of 
our  earlier  and  smaller  plans. 

At  the  last,  our  own  civilization  must  supply  the 
test  of  the  adequacy  of  our  Gospel  and  our  methods  of 
applying  it.  If  the  Church  must  acknowledge  defeat 
and  failure  in  its  own  life  and  throughout  our  own 
society,  what  shall  it  signify  that  we  have  manifested 
the  utmost  of  zeal  in  the  application  to  another  so- 
ciety of  what  has  not  ''made  good"  in  our  own? 
The  test  involves  more  than  the  Church  as  an  isolated 
institution.  The  whole  fabric  of  our  American 
Christianity  is  on  trial.  Some  of  our  spiritual 
agencies  are  deliberately  avoiding  the  plain  issues  of 
the  spiritual  conquest  in  our  American  life.  We 
seek  to  make  ourselves  believe  that  certain  bad  con- 
ditions are  not  the  responsibility  of  the  "purely 
spiritual"  agencies.  But  our  whole  civilization 
stands  or  falls  together.  It  cannot  furnish  us  much 
comfort  to  be  certain  after  the  failure  that  our  theories 
were  good  and  that  the  fault  lay  only  in  their  appli- 
cation. We  would  better  learn  how  to  apply  them. 
Yearning  humanity  looks  for  demonstrations,  and  it 
[85] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

is  not  likely  to  accept  with  much  avidity  doctrines 
which  we  ourselves  show  ourselves  unable  or  unwill- 
ing to  work  out.  The  "home  mission  method" 
must  furnish  both  the  test  and  the  hope  of  our  world 
mission. 


[86] 


YII 

CONSTEUCTION  AND  EECONSTEUCTION— 
CEEATION  AND  EEDEMPTION1 

It  would  be  easy  enough  to  make  a  world  if  one 
only  had  a  pile  of  new  lumber  and  a  kit  of  tools. 
The  plague  of  it  is  that  all  the  lumber  is  riddled 
with  nail-holes  from  somebody's  tinkering.  The 
plague  of  it  and  the  art  of  it.  It  takes  consummate 
art  to  build  a  world  out  of  that  sort  of  stuff.  Be- 
sides, that  is  the  only  sort  there  is  ;  we  would  well 
make  the  most  of  it.  All  the  building  material  has 
been  everlastingly  messed  over.  Oliver  Wendell 
Holmes  used  to  say  that  the  proper  time  to  begin 
training  a  child  is  two  hundred  years  before  he  is 
born.  That  is  making  the  task  far  too  simple.  Con- 
servative science  now  makes  it  ten  thousand  of  years. 

You  must  have  observed  that  there  is  nothing  doing 
nowadays  in  the  creation  line.  Even  God  has  turned 
His  attention  to  something  else.  If  you  are  pleased 
to  accept  Bishop  Usher's  chronology,  whose  notations 
appear  on  the  margin  of  our  Bibles,  it  is  now  some 
six  thousand  years  since  God  made  anything  brand 
new.  And  if  you  ask  the  modern  scientist  how  long 
it  has  been  since  the  beginning  of  things  here  in 
this  world  he  will  say  ten  millions  of  years  or  a 
hundred  millions,  according  to  how  hard  he  has 
worked  his  imagination.     Appeal  to  the  anthropolo- 

1  A  familiar  talk  to  a  company  of  students  ;  many  colloquial- 
isms are  here  retained. 

[87] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

gist  to  introduce  you  to  the  first  man,  and  he  will 
frankly  confess  that  he  has  never  met  him.  The 
fact  is  he  does  not  know  where  the  first  man  begins 
and  some  preceding  form  of  life  leaves  off.  He 
sends  you  off  to  the  biologist.  Ask  the  biologist 
where  life  came  from  and  he  will  mumble  out  some- 
thing about  primordial  germs  and  the  first  fleck  of 
protoplasm  which  dropped  upon  this  earth.  But 
when  you  ask  him  where  it  dropped  from  he  will 
tell  you  to  run  along  and  not  pester  him  with  fool- 
ish questions.  He  will  then  turn  and  add  with  a 
twinkle  in  his  eye,  Go  to  the  astronomer  ;  he  is  long 
on  imagination.  And  the  astronomer,  if  he  accepts 
the  nebular  hypothesis,  as  they  almost  all  do,  being 
careful,  however,  to  call  it  an  hypothesis,  he  will 
talk  of  whirling  gasses  out  of  which  suns  and  stars 
are  made,  but  he  will  never  even  work  his  imagina- 
tion back  of  the  whirling  gasses.  So  the  ultimate  of 
ultimates  for  physical  science  is  a  whirl.  Which  is 
a  long  way  this  side  of  that  orderly  pile  of  new 
lumber  we  were  searching  for.  The  air  is  full  of 
lumber  flying  every  which-a-way  before  we  get  the 
first  chance  to  lift  tool  in  making  our  world.  Which 
shows  how  foolish  we  are  for  seeking  that  sort  of 
thing.  Suppose  we  settle  down,  like  sensible  people, 
to  the  business  which  is  in  hand.  Not  to  create, 
but  to  recreate ;  not  construction  de  novo,  but  re- 
construction is  the  business  of  the  hour.  Even  a 
God  who  could  only  create  a  world  would  be  of  no 
value  to  Himself  or  us.  The  creation  business  is  not 
in  the  line  of  to-day's  demands,  and  there  will  never 
be  call  for  the  goods  so  long  as  the  world  lasts. 
We  Americans  have  quite  generally  gotten  into  bad 
[88] 


CONSTRUCTION  AND  RECONSTRUCTION 

habits  ;  bad  for  this  business  now  so  pressing.  Our 
history  has  trained  us  into  them.  We  are  born  pio- 
neers and  we  scarcely  find  life  worth  living  if  we  can- 
not explore  and  exploit.  Each  generation  has  to  pre- 
empt a  new  farm  on  which  the  sod  has  never  before 
been  turned.  If  the  old  farm  wears  out,  no  matter  ; 
there  is  more  land  further  west.  In  the  early  days 
when  a  dozen  or  twenty  crops  of  cotton  had  impov- 
erished the  soil,  they  deserted  the  old,  bag  and  bag- 
gage, and  cut  a  new  cotton  field  out  of  the  virgin 
forest.  If  the  driver  of  an  ox-team  out  on  the  plains 
needed  a  whip-lash  he  would  shoot  down  a  buffalo 
bull  to  get  a  thong  out  of  his  hide.  Why  not? 
There  was  a  plenty  of  buffalo,  and,  besides,  the 
rottiug  carcass  would  help  to  fertilize  the  soil  for 
the  oncoming  settlers, — though  that  last  was  an 
afterthought. 

That  sort  of  thing  got  into  the  American  blood, 
until  to-day  it  is  requiring  all  the  skill  and  passion 
of  our  new  order  of  statesmanship  to  check  the 
havoc  which  is  making  a  devastation  of  our  natural 
resources.  Still  it  is  not  the  wastefulness  and  reck- 
lessness of  such  a  method  which  concerns  us  at  this 
moment.  It  is  rather  the  artlessness,  the  blurred  in- 
sight into  the  nature  of  things.  We  will  let  pass 
for  the  moment  the  sacrifice  of  our  forests  and  min- 
eral stores,  and  note  rather  the  sacrifice  of  soul-stuff. 
That  sort  of  business  is  the  subversion  of  the  divine 
order  of  getting  things  done.  A  man  who  must  lay 
hands  on  brand  new  raw  material  every  time  he  sets 
about  making  auything  will  soon  be  out  of  a  job. 
Our  American  heroes  have  been  pioneers  for  the 
most  part,  have  blazed  the  trail  through  limitless 
[89] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

virgin  territory,  and  we  have  all  got  quite  too  much 
the  notion  that  the  only  way  to  be  great  is  to  spread 
one's  self  over  the  most  of  creation.  The  man  who 
must  have  ten  miles  square  to  stretch  his  arms  and 
legs  in  would  best  mend  his  habits.  The  earth  was 
not  laid  out  upon  such  an  extravagant  basis  as  to  keep 
him  permanently  comfortable,  and,  what  is  more  to 
the  present  point,  he  fails  to  discover  the  real  beauty 
and  joy  of  the  divine  ordering  of  human  society. 
Such  a  man  does  not  get  the  best  out  of  his  neigh- 
bours nor  do  his  neighbours  get  the  best  out  of  him. 
These  considerations  are  directly  apropos  of  the 
business  of  choosing  a  life-work  and  ordering  one's 
plans  in  a  life-method.  There  is  danger  of  the  su- 
perficial conclusion  that  pioneering,  running  after 
raw  material  and  conditions,  constitutes  the  truest 
heroism  and  embodies  the  highest  art  of  living. 
That  conclusion  is  very  superficial  and  misleading. 
I  received  a  letter  some  time  ago  from  a  young  fellow 
who  had  taken  charge  of  a  sleepy,  easy-going  church 
in  a  community  to  match  away  back  in  the  east. 
After  a  few  months'  experience  he  wrote,  "I  cannot 
stand  this ;  the  devil  is  so  little  active  here  that  my 
ministry  is  not  even  entertaining."  Within  a  short 
time  he  moved  out  to  a  raw,  new  community  where 
the  devil  is  supposed  to  keep  things  on  the  jump 
every  day  in  the  year.  That  looks  like  a  very  he- 
roic thing  to  do,  but  I  am  not  sure  that  it  was. 
Perhaps  he  was  only  seeking  the  picturesque  in  the 
devil  line,  does  not  really  know  the  devil  when  he 
meets  him,  is  so  unappreciative  of  real  devilish- 
ness  that  unless  he  sees  a  flash  of  red  paint  and  hears 
his  tail  crack  he  does  not  discover  that  there  is  a 
[90] 


CONSTBUCTION  AND  BECONSTRUCTION 

devil  nearabouts.  My  observation  leads  me  to  es- 
timate that  the  biggest,  lustiest  devil  one  may  en- 
counter is  stagnation,  smug,  self-righteous  content- 
ment. That  is  the  sort  of  devil  it  takes  grit  and 
consummate  art  to  conquer. 

Not  long  ago  a  minister  wrote  me  in  this  lament : 
' '  Oh,  these  little,  ancient,  educationless,  self-con- 
tented, poverty-stricken,  run-down-at-the-heel  coun- 
try churches  of  the  old  east!"  Uh-huh,  surely 
enough,  when  I  was  down  in  his  section  of  the  country 
the  other  day,  I  was  told  that  he  had  quit  and  moved 
off  somewhere  else.  If  you  want  to  know  what  is  the 
hardest  and  finest  job  in  church  lines,  it  is  just 
that,  the  tussle  with  the  problem  of  the  country  com- 
munity of  the  older  sections  of  the  land.  I  say  it  is 
the  finest  as  well  as  the  hardest,  perhaps  most  because 
it  is  the  hardest,  but  much  because  it  is  in  line  with 
the  divine  method  of  going  at  things  in  this  world. 
Within  a  few  miles  of  the  minister,  whose  letter  I 
quoted  just  now,  I  found  a  community  which  a 
young  fellow  just  out  of  the  seminary  had  made 
over  in  two  years'  time.  For  miles  around  the  peo- 
ple thought  he  was  about  the  only  thing  which  had 
ever  happened.  He  certainly  was  the  best  which 
had  happened  thereabouts  ;  he  had  made  a  new 
thing  out  of  a  lot  of  old  stuff  which  others  had 
badly  messed  over.  That  is  what  God  Almighty  is 
doing  every  day  ;  is  the  only  thing  He  is  doing  now- 
adays ;  that  is  where  He  gets  His  glory. 

Another  young  minister  who  was  in  charge  of  a 
church  in  one  of  our  Western  states  announced  dra- 
matically the  other  day  that  he  would  not  spend  his 
life  in  a  town  with  three  churches  where  there  should 
[91] 


WOELD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

be  but  one,  so  he  packed  up  in  high  dudgeon  and 
went  off  to  China.  Now,  it  is  a  fine  thing  to  cry  out 
upon  a  community  which  tolerates  three  little,  God- 
forsaken churches  when  one  would  supply  the  need, 
and  it  is  a  fine  thing  to  go  as  a  missionary  to  China, 
but  the  whole  setting  of  the  incident  makes  it  clear 
that  this  particular  man  is  not  so  intent  upon  build- 
ing up  the  kingdom  of  God  as  he  is  to  evade  a  diffi- 
cult situation.  The  chief  attraction  of  China  to  him 
appears  to  be  that  China  affords  an  unlimited  supply 
of  raw  material  which  he  can  tinker  over.  There  are 
about  four  hundred  and  fifty  millions  of  people  over 
there  from  whom  he  can  pick  and  choose.  The  king- 
dom of  God  will  not  come  in  China  or  any  other  place 
on  such  a  programme  as  that.  Our  friend  will  find 
in  China  a  far  older  civilization  still  on  which  to  test 
his  arts  of  reconstruction.  If  a  man  is  seeking  a 
really  delicate  and  heroic  task  and  wishes  to  perform 
a  piece  of  work  which  will  bring  on  the  kingdom  in 
very  deed,  only  let  him  tackle  that  same  task  which 
that  minister  fled  so  unceremoniously, — and  succeed 
at  it ;  let  him  go  into  a  community  afflicted  with  three 
churches  in  the  place  where  one  ought  to  be,  and  let 
him  put  two  of  them  out  of  business  right  gracefully. 
That  performance  will  put  stars  in  his  crown,  and 
will  render  a  service  for  genuine  Christianity  which 
ought  to  inscribe  his  name  among  the  heroes  of  the 
faith.  The  men  who  are  equal  to  that  task  are  pre- 
cisely those  most  needed  by  the  Church  of  Christ  these 
days. 

It  has  often  come  about  that  what  passed  for  grand 
heroism  is  only  thinly  disguised  cowardice  or  indo- 
lence.   The  pioneering  spirit  is  admirable.    The  noble 
[92] 


CONSTRUCTION  AND  RECONSTRUCTION 

achievements  of  our  American  sires,  who  pressed  out 
through  the  trackless  forests  and  across  the  wide 
plains,  carving  empires  out  of  vast  wastes,  subduing 
a  continent  to  the  benignant  arts  of  civilization,  and 
on  and  in  that  direction, — all  that  is  as  grand  as  our 
Fourth  of  July  orations  make  it  out  to  be.  Setting 
up  a  civilization  in  the  wilderness  is  magnificent. 
But  running  out  into  the  wilds  to  escape  the  restric- 
tions of  civilization  ;  shirking  the  responsibilities  of 
society  by  slinking  away  where  there  is  no  society  ; 
camping  out  in  the  woods  so  as  to  save  laundry  bills  ; 
taking  to  the  open  so  as  to  dodge  the  tax-collector, — 
that  has  been  the  trick  of  indolent  and  cowardly  ad- 
venturers ever  since  human  society  began  to  be  or- 
ganized. After  all  it  requires  little  brains  to  eke  out 
an  existence  upon  the  supplies  of  raw  nature.  Almost 
any  old  hunk  of  soil-scratcher  can  raise  a  crop  on 
virgin  soil.  The  agriculture  of  advanced  society  has 
become  a  science,  and  only  scientists  of  a  high  degree 
of  expertness  can  attain  the  fullest  success  at  it. 
Communities  known  as  gospel-hardened  require  a 
higher  order  of  genius  and  spiritual  prowess  really 
to  regenerate  them  than  is  required  for  a  community 
which  has  never  been  touched  by  Christian  influ- 
ences. 

The  great  achievers  of  every  age  have  been  the 
champions  of  the  forlorn  hope.  The  more  nearly 
impossible  the  task  the  grander  is  the  triumph  in  the 
achievement.  Booker  "Washington  has  repeatedly 
and  devoutly  expressed  his  gratitude  to  Almighty 
God  that  when  the  time  came  for  him  to  take  his 
place  in  human  society  he  was  born  an  American 
negro.  For,  says  he,  the  uegro  is  a  race  with  a  prob- 
[93] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

lem,  and  throughout  history  the  races  with  a  problem 
have  beeu  the  achieving  races.  That  sentiment  and 
the  courage  to  make  the  sentiment  good  have  set  and 
will  set  Booker  Washington  among  the  great  spirits 
of  the  centuries.  The  most  of  us  doubtless  never 
cease  to  thank  God  that  we  were  born  to  some  other 
race  than  the  negro,  but  if  a  man  is  born  a  negro 
there  is  no  nobler  thing  he  could  say  and  act  upon 
than  just  that.  It  takes  a  colossal  courage  to  do  it. 
The  bigger  the  task  the  more  the  honour  there  is 
in  undertaking  it, — if  so  be  that  it  is  worth  the  effort. 

That  is  an  all-important  consideration ;  that  the 
task  should  be  worth  while.  This  is  a  good  pre- 
scription for  a  life  programme  :  pick  out  a  job  that  is 
plainly  and  eternally  worth  while,  and  then  thank 
God  for  making  it  hard.  For  the  most  part  only  the 
hard  tasks  are  worth  while  anyway.  Some  care 
should  be  exercised,  however,  in  defining  the  quali- 
ties of  hardness.  There  is  no  virtue  in  hard  work 
for  the  sake  of  its  hardness.  The  heroism  of  some 
who  are  reputed  to  support  that  virtue  is  of  a  type 
peculiar  to  itself  and  a  battering-ram.  You  cannot 
infallibly  maul  your  way  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
True  heroism  mixes  a  modicum  of  brains  with  its 
sweat.  That  is  invariably  the  beauty  of  all  the  really 
hard  tasks  with  which  I  happen  to  be  familiar  :  they 
present  an  unlimited  opportunity  for  the  exploita- 
tion of  brains.  It  is  always  well  for  one  to  have  a 
moderate  supply  of  brains  along  with  him  when  he 
tackles  one  of  them. 

It  is  pitiful  to  discover  how  much  which  goes  by 
the  name  of  heroism  and  courageous  devotion  is  in 
reality  a  mixture  of  stupidity  and  dogged  inertia. 
[94] 


CONSTRUCTION  AND  RECONSTRUCTION 

There  is  absolutely  no  virtue  iu  messing  over  a  bad 
mess  and  leaving  it  still  a  bad  mess.  But  seizing  the 
forlorn  hope  and  putting  courage  into  it  :  that  is 
heroism.  Putting  brains  into  an  enterprise  of  which 
blundering  tinkerers  have  made  a  bad  botch  :  that  is 
precisely  the  chance  for  the  man  who  has  got  the 
brains  and  the  insight  to  make  himself  great  in  the 
eyes  of  God  and  man.  It  is  idle  to  search  for  a  brand 
new  world  to  begin  operations  in ;  there  is  no  such 
world.  Not  even  God  Himself  is  in  that  line  of  busi- 
ness,— at  least  in  our  part  of  the  universe.  He  finds 
Himself  fully  occupied  with  making  over  the  old 
world  into  a  better  one,  and  therein  He  reveals  His 
crowning  glory.  The  finest  thing  God  has  ever  done, 
by  His  own  declaration,  is  not  to  create  the  world 
but  to  redeem  it.  I  reckon  we  can  do  no  better  than 
follow  His  example. 


[95] 


vni 

"THE  CRISIS"  IN  MISSION AET  METHOD 

The  Christian  missionary  enterprise  must  claim 
the  serious  consideration  of  all  thoughtful  people  to- 
day. General  public  intelligence  is  elicited  even 
where  its  motives  arouse  no  enthusiasm.  It  does  not 
longer  belong,  if  it  ever  belonged,  among  the  inci- 
dents or  accidents  of  events.  It  is  one  of  the  most 
significant  social  movements  of  the  times. 

Being  such,  the  missionary  enterprise  inevitably 
shares  with  other  great  movements  the  effects  of  the 
far-reaching  social  reconstructions  now  on.  The  title 
above  is  not  meant  to  suggest  that  there  is  a  crisis 
imminent  peculiar  to  the  missionary  movement.  As 
yet  the  crisis  here  is  indeed  less  obvious  than  in  the 
case  of  other  enterprises  touching  general  human  in- 
terests. Even  the  Church,  considered  as  an  institution 
of  American  society,  is  more  profoundly  affected  than 
is  the  missionary  propaganda,  though  the  latter  is 
esteemed  to  be  so  closely  identified  with  the  Church's 
life  and  activities.  To  a  degree  the  missionary 
propaganda  is,  however,  segregated  from  the  Church. 
Perhaps  this  segregation  is  in  some  particulars  be- 
coming more  marked  than  formerly.  The  missionary 
boards,  through  which  the  various  churches  conduct 
their  missionary  work,  are  in  some  cases  increasingly 
detached  from  the  churches  they  represent.  Of 
course  the  detachment  cannot  be  carried  to  an  ex- 
treme, since  the  support  of  such  boards  would  thus 
[96] 


"THE  CBISIS"  IN  MISSION AEY  METHOD 

be  jeopardized.  But  not  even  that  consideration 
makes  so  powerfully  for  attachment  as  formerly. 
The  support  of  some  of  the  boards  from  independent 
sources  is  greatly  increasing  of  late.  Endowments 
are  accumulating,  aud  the  encouragement  to  individ- 
uals to  contribute  through  personal  appeals  rather 
than  through  church  channels,  is  affording  an  in- 
creasing liberty  to  boards  so  disposed  to  disregard,  at 
least  tacitly,  the  currents  of  public  opinion  ruuning 
through  the  churches  they  officially  represent. 

While,  therefore,  the  general  social  crisis  is  pro- 
foundly affecting  the  Church,  the  missionary  propa- 
ganda has  not  felt  its  influence  so  directly.  To  per- 
haps the  most  of  observers  it  may  not  appear  that 
what  may  be  called  a  crisis  is  imminent  in  the  con- 
duct of  Christian  missions.  The  issue  is  inevitable, 
however,  and  the  more  discerning  may  already  dis- 
cover movements  which  general  ebullitions  of  enthu- 
siasm obscure. 

Christianity  stands  for  world  citizenship.  No  one 
can  be  a  Christian,  as  the  term  has  been  intelligently 
interpreted  in  American  churches,  and  feel  no  large 
enthusiasms  for  spiritual  world  conquest.  It  is  of 
the  essence  of  missions,  whatever  be  their  method  of 
conduct  or  whatever  may  be  the  geographical  range 
of  their  responsibility,  to  organize  their  activities  on 
a  world  basis.  Any  differences  which  may  arise 
among  missionary  propagandists  must  be  merely  a 
divergence  of  method  ;  the  final  aim  and  scope  of  all 
effort  must  be  the  same,  and  is  the  same. 

Christianity,  when  rationally  construed,  has  always 
been  on  the  side  of  human  liberty.     Political  differ- 
ences among  Christians  have  always  touched  matters 
[97] 


WOKLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

of  method  in  government ;  they  have  never  gone 
deep  enough  to  touch  the  essence  of  human  freedom. 
Christian  governments  have  sometimes  been  the  in- 
struments of  oppression,  but  all  sincere  Christians 
have  recognized  that  in  so  far  as  that  has  been  true, 
government  has  committed  sacrilege  upon  the  name 
Christian. 

In  the  crisis  towards  which  American  society  is 
moving  all  along  the  line  the  issue  is  not  the  fact  of 
human  liberty.  At  least  neither  party  to  the  social 
controversy  will  for  a  moment  allow  that  it  takes  the 
adverse  position.  On  the  contrary  each  party  is 
zealous  to  claim  for  itself  that  sacred  palladium.  To 
be  sure,  socialism  advances  its  programme  as  the  only 
security  for  essential  human  freedom,  but  the  oppo- 
nents of  socialism,  and  the  defenders  of  the  present 
order,  are  equally  forward  to  safeguard  society  in  its 
enjoyment  of  jeopardized  personal  and  democratic 
liberty.  Maybe  human  liberty  is  indeed  the  final 
stake,  but  it  is  not  such  by  the  mutual  agreement  of 
the  parties  to  the  controversy.  Each  is  zealously 
employed  in  precisely  the  business  of  guaranteeing 
the  fullest  liberty.  Individualism  and  socialism  are 
two  antagonistic  schools  of  governmental  method  ; 
there  is  complete  agreement  as  to  the  goal  of  human 
welfare,  and  in  that  sense  their  aim  may  be  said  to 
be  the  same,  inherently  antagonistic  as  methods 
though  they  may  be. 

This  is  the  crisis  which  is  inevitable  in  the  mission- 
ary enterprise.  It  is  the  settling  of  accounts  by  the 
Church  and  missionary  forces  generally  between  indi- 
vidualism and  the  social  method.  The  crisis  which 
American  society  faces  all  along  the  line  is  one  of  far 
[98] 


"THE  CRISIS"  IX  MISSIONARY  METHOD 

deeper  significance  than  the  conflict  between  organ- 
ized political  socialism  and  its  opponents.  Political 
socialism  as  to-day  organized  is  showing  an  inepti- 
tude somewhat  similar  to  that  of  abolitionism  during 
its  rampant  ante-bellum  career.  The  historian  is  now 
assuring  us  that  organized  and  political  abolitionism 
actually  delayed  abolition  by  much  of  its  activity  ; 
perhaps  the  net  result  was  to  hinder  rather  than  to 
help  the  cause  it  espoused.  It  may  not  be  surprising 
if  the  historian  of  the  future  shall  with  similar  con- 
clusiveness show  that  to-day's  political  socialism  has 
been  similarly  untrue  to  the  ends  it  would  serve  in 
society.  But  the  social  recount  ruction  is  going  for- 
ward nevertheless,  and  the  issue  must  be  more  and 
more  closely  joined  in  the  realm  of  politics,  econom- 
ics, iudustry,  and  all  along  the  line,  between  an  un- 
compromising individualism  and  the  social  definition 
of  rights  and  realities.  So  stanch  an  emancipator  as 
Abraham  Lincoln  was  very  loath  to  be  classed  among 
the  abolitionists  of  his  day.  Similarly,  there  are 
countless  men  and  women  nowadays  who  decline  to 
accept  the  programme  of  the  dominant  political  so- 
cialistic propagandists,  who  yet  recognize  clearly  the 
demand  for  the  socializing  process  in  government, 
industry,  church  and  everywhere  throughout  our 
American  life,  and  who  commit  themselves  with  their 
whole  soul  to  that  programme. 

In  the  Church  the  demand  for  the  social  interpre- 
tation of  Christianity  and  the  socialization  of  the 
Church's  mechanism  has  so  far  led  to  little  except 
stagnation.  The  Church  has  paused  for  introspection 
and  for  a  reconsideration  of  some  of  its  ideals,  and 
continues  for  the  most  part  to-day  in  that  attitude. 
[99] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

It  has  not  yet  decided  upon  the  new  course  to  be 
pursued  in  the  new  light  now  dawning.  There  is 
profound  dissatisfaction  with  that  type  of  evangelism 
which  presents  merely  an  individualistic  scheme  of 
salvation.  Such  evangelism  is  still  suffered  in  most 
branches  of  the  Church,  and,  for  the  lack  of  anything 
better  and  definite  to  take  its  place,  it  is  even  en- 
couraged by  many.  But  perhaps  a  majority  of  those 
even  who  cling  to  it  with  a  show  of  conviction  are 
painfully  conscious  of  its  inadequacy  if  not  of  its  false 
emphasis,  and  encourage  its  professional  propaganda 
because  they  can  never  be  reconciled  to  a  church 
which  makes  no  attempt  at  evangelizing,  and  no 
other  method  has  been  made  generally  available. 
Of  course  this  attitude  leads  and  can  only  lead  to 
stagnation.  In  this  temporary  condition  the  Church 
now  finds  itself.  There  is  an  immense  amount  of 
enthusiasm  in  the  Church.  Hosts  of  its  members  are 
sincerely  committed  to  the  large  ends  for  which  the 
Church  stands,  and  no  degree  of  devotion  is  too  great 
an  exaction  if  those  ends  may  be  attained.  An 
evangelism  with  only  the  individualistic  emphasis 
has  the  field.  The  inadequacy  of  such  has  become 
fully  apparent  to  the  thoughtful  where  they  see  it 
actually  applied,  in  their  home  city,  in  the  com- 
munity for  whose  spiritual  welfare  their  own  church 
is  responsible.  But  it  seems  not  to  have  failed  in  the 
missionary  propaganda  at  the  distance.  Indeed,  it  is 
marvellously  succeeding  in  certain  missionary  fields 
which  are  much  before  the  public  attention.  Why  it 
fails  close  at  hand  and  succeeds  at  the  distance  is  a 
matter  aside  from  this  discussion.  The  demonstra- 
tion of  success  is  complete,  at  any  rate  ;  is  at  least 
[100] 


"THE  CRISIS"  IN  MISSIONARY  METHOD 

satisfactory  to  the  Church.  And  the  individualistic 
method  is  accordingly  strongly  intrenched  with  the 
missionary  propaganda,  is  more  strougly  intrenched 
there  than  is  the  evangelism  of  the  individualistic  type 
in  the  esteem  of  the  Church  in  its  own  communities. 

The  application  of  this  method  shows  several  well- 
marked  features.  A  foreign  mission,  maintained  as 
foreign,  requires  the  individualistic  method,  and 
must  be  conducted  permanently  upon  that  basis. 
The  missionaries  are  sent  out  as  individuals,  and  only 
in  a  limited  way  can  they  become  a  compact,  or- 
ganized force.  In  the  nature  of  the  case  the  impacts 
of  their  lives  upon  the  society  of  the  countries  of 
their  residence  must  be  individualistic.  The  personal 
Christian  graces  of  character  can  be  conspicuously 
displayed,  and  are,  of  course,  so  displayed.  Chris- 
tian family  life  can  be  maintained.  But  there  the 
field  for  the  demonstration  of  Christian  social  virtues 
reaches  the  practicable  limit.  Small  missionary 
communities  in  segregated  compouuds  are  doubtless 
of  some  value  as  social  demonstration  centres,  but 
their  necessary  artificiality  limits  their  value.  Of 
course  the  missionary,  as  a  foreigner,  must  religiously 
eschew  participation  in  local  politics.  Some  mis- 
sionaries are  so  consistent  in  this  attitude  as  to  rec- 
ommend such  renunciation  also  to  the  native  Chris- 
tian converts  as  expedient  or,  indeed,  virtuous.  The 
social  embarrassment  of  foreign  missionaries  and  of 
the  propaganda  they  represent  is  marked  on  every 
side.  It  tends  all  the  time  to  confirm  the  individual- 
istic temper  and  the  individualistic  interpretation  of 
the  system  they  seek  to  propagate. 

Thus  the  native  Christian  cannot  look  directly  to 
[101] 


WOELD  MISSIONS  FKOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

the  missionaries  for  the  concrete  demonstration  of  the 
social  Christian  virtues  so  essential  in  the  doubly 
complicated  situation  he  occupies  in  local  society. 
If  the  missionary  maintains  that  the  individualistic 
method  is  ultimate,  and  represents  an  individualistic 
scheme  of  salvation  as  final  aud  complete,  he  runs 
counter  to  approved  world  tendencies  and  repudiates 
a  social  theory  which  the  schools  of  thought  in  all 
civilized  lauds  are  successfully  establishing.  If  he 
frankly  accepts  the  embarrassment  of  his  situation, 
he  is  placed  in  the  position  of  advocating  a  set  of 
doctrines  designed  profoundly  to  affect  social  condi- 
tions of  all  phases,  while  acknowledging  that  there  is 
no  possibility  of  affording  a  concrete  demonstration 
of  the  value  of  his  theories.  Being  only  a  theorist 
in  this  all-important  realm  he  can  only  stand  before 
local  society  as  a  theorist.  The  dilemma  is  serious. 
His  only  recourse  is  to  point  to  the  actual  social 
demonstrations  which  have  been  made  in  acknowl- 
edged Christian  countries.  While  that  recourse  is 
fruitful  in  a  general  way,  it  also  is  attended  by  certain 
poignant  embarrassments.  Those  demonstrations  so 
often  subvert  doctrines  the  missionary  preaches  that 
they  call  for  his  apology  or  repudiation  rather  than 
supply  him  with  the  object  lesson  desiderated.  In 
any  event,  the  situation  makes  clear  what  must  be  the 
final  aud  effective  method  of  world  missioning.  The 
social  obligations  carry  activities  at  last  back  to  the 
arena  of  the  missionary's  own  society  and  the  commu- 
nity which  sends  him  out  to  represent  its  propaganda. 
So  essential  is  the  individualistic  method  to  a 
foreigu  mission,  maintained  as  foreign,  that  much  of 
the  missionary  propaganda  has  been  in  the  past,  and 
[102] 


4 'THE  CRISIS"  IN  MISSIONARY  METHOD 

is  still  to  a  remarkable  degree,  sponsored  by  that  ex- 
tremely individualistic  doctrine  which  the  theolo- 
gians are  accustomed  to  distinguish  by  the  term 
premillenarianism.  According  to  this  conception 
the  objective  of  missionary  activity  is  the  presenta- 
tion of  Christ  to  each  inhabitant  of  the  earth  for  his 
personal  acceptance  or  rejection,  which  event  is 
maintained  to  be  the  condition  and  precursor  of  the 
cataclysmic  overthrow  of  the  present  world- order 
and  the  second  coming  of  Christ  in  personal  presence 
to  institute  and  preside  over  a  new  and  vitally  differ- 
ent social  order.  This  doctrine  is  accepted  in  vary- 
ing forms  and  with  varying  degrees  of  consistency. 
One  conspicuous  leader  of  the  modern  missionary 
movement  a  decade  ago  made  reckonings,  on  the 
basis  of  his  interpretation  of  certain  Biblical  prophe- 
cies, to  the  effect  that  this  event  would  befall  at  a 
date  near  the  present,  one  reckoning  fixing  1910. 
More  recent  considerations  may  have  led  him  to  set  the 
date  forward  or  indeed  to  have  left  it  uncertain,  as  do 
most  premillenarians  nowadays,  but  he  still  holds 
most  tenaciously  to  the  doctrine.  It  is  fair  to  others 
to  say  that  while  this  individual  is  still  a  leader  and 
is  conspicuous  in  the  missionary  movement,  he  and 
his  views  have  not  the  same  standing  they  had  a  short 
time  ago. 

In  less  consistent  forms  this  premillenarian  view 
is  widely  entertained,  however,  among  leaders  of  the 
missionary  movement ;  more  widely  than  even  the 
church  public  is  conscious.  It  presumably  gives 
currency  to  such  carefully  worded  phrases  as  that 
which  sets  as  the  objective  of  missionary  activity 
"to  make  Jesus  known"  to  each  inhabitant  of  the 
[103] 


WOKLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

eai'th.  This  objective  is  that  often  held  forth  in  the 
expression,  "  The  Evangelization  of  the  World  in  the 
Present  Generation,"  though  that  slogan  is  used  by 
many  who  do  not  entertain  the  preinillenarian  view. 
The  phrase  so  carefully  employed  in  the  official  pro- 
nouncements of  the  Laymen's  Missionary  Movement, 
"  the  presentation  "  of  Christ  to  all  men  during  the 
present  generation,  is  evidently  inspired  by  the  pre- 
inillenarian doctrine, — and  has  been  so  interpreted 
by  the  editor  of  at  least  one  of  our  serious  American 
journals.  Certain  leaders  of  the  Laymen's  Mission- 
ary Movement,  whose  conceptions  must  predominate 
in  its  direction,  are  understood  to  hold  this  view  with 
much  devotion.  Of  course  the  hosts  of  men  compos- 
ing the  Laymen's  Missionary  Movement  are  not  com- 
mitted to  this  doctrine,  and  in  so  far  are  not  con- 
sciously committed  to  the  programme  which  the  offi- 
cial pronouncements  of  the  movement  set  forth. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  the  increasiug  majority  of 
the  members  of  American  churches  will  be  satisfied 
with  no  such  ideal  nor  with  the  programme  which  it 
contemplates.  They  are  not  interested  in  the  perpet- 
uation of  such  jaw-racking  terms  as  premillenarian- 
ism,  and,  what  is  more  to  the  point,  the  inherent  and 
extreme  individualism  which  it  embodies  will  gain 
short  shrift  from  a  Christian  public  which  has  come 
to  full  consciousness  in  the  period  of  social  recon- 
struction whither  American  society  is  now  rapidly 
moving.  The  Church  is  increasingly  committed  in 
its  thought,  however  deficient  may  be  its  programme, 
to  the  establishment  of  the  kiugdom  of  heaven  here 
upon  the  earth  in  our  American  and  world  society. 
It  is  rapidly  coming  to  appreciate  the  need  of  a  social 
[104] 


"  THE  CRISIS  "  IN  MISSIONARY  METHOD 

salvation  equal  to  this  task,  and  already  begins  to 
discover  the  inadequacy  of  an  essentially  individual- 
istic scheme. 

There  has  always  been  a  more  or  less  open  diver- 
gence of  interest  between  home  and  foreign  missions. 
It  has  never  reached  either  the  dignity  or  disgrace  of 
a  conflict  so  far  as  the  sincere  and  serious  member- 
ship of  the  Church  is  concerned.  Differences  have 
sometimes  been  magnified  which  were  essentially 
puerile,  but  for  the  most  part  protagonists  of  either 
the  home  cause  or  the  foreign  have  been  solicitous  to 
maintain  the  essential  unity  of  the  enterprise.  Such 
unity  is  indeed  real  so  long  as  the  one  goal  and  one 
method  are  maintained  with  only  divergences  of  geo- 
graphical application.  Up  to  recently  the  home 
mission  boards  have  cherished  individualistic  ideals 
and  pursued  individualistic  methods  hardly  less  con- 
sistently than  the  foreign  boards.  In  the  most  of 
cases  their  field  was  conceived  to  be  the  spiritual 
ministry  through  conventional  evangelistic  means  to 
the  isolated  frontiers,  to  the  remnants  of  our  aborig- 
inal population,  to  the  neglected  peoples  of  stagnated 
rural  regions  and  of  submerged  city  slums.  Very 
few  of  the  modern  social-religious  enterprises  of 
the  cities,  for  example,  have  been  initiated  by  the 
"  old-line"  church  home  mission  boards.  Some  of 
the  boards  have  adopted  such  methods  after  they 
have  been  originated  by  independent  agencies,  but 
the  boards  have  discovered  very  little  social  initiative 
even  of  this  simple  order. 

And  now  these  church  home  mission  boards  are 
feeling  the  same  pressure  of  which  the  Church  is  slowly 
growing  conscious.  The  individualistic  programme 
[105] 


WOELD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

is  manifestly  inadequate,  if  not  in  its  traditional  ap- 
plication false.  And  the  boards  are  in  an  attitude 
similar  to  that  of  the  churches  they  represent :  they 
are  at  pause,  or,  though  active  along  traditional 
lines,  are  feeling  the  discouragement  of  witnessing 
the  inadequacy  of  the  traditional  methods  and  ideals. 
There  is  a  general  awakening  to  the  need  of  social 
vision  and  comprehensive  social  method,  but  the  sup- 
ply of  the  need  still  waits.  Many  bureaus  or  depart- 
ments of  social  service  have  been  instituted  in  imme- 
diate incorporation  with  established  home  mission 
boards  or  independently,  but  it  can  scarcely  be  said 
that  any  of  them  has  yet  found  itself.  There  awaits 
the  needed  reconstruction  in  the  sentiments  of  the 
churches  themselves,  and  the  clarification  of  that 
sentiment  until  backing  may  be  afforded  a  definite 
and  comprehensive  social  programme. 

The  home  mission  boards  of  the  American  churches 
are  less  effectively  organized  than  are  the  foreign 
boards.  This  is  apparently  quite  the  reversal  of  con- 
ditions which  once  prevailed.  The  reason  is  not 
alone  that  the  foreign  boards  have  increased  in  effi- 
ciency, but  the  event  is  due  even  more  largely  to  the 
fact  that  the  fabric  of  which  the  home  mission  boards 
were  constructed  has,  one  may  say,  gone  to  pieces. 
Events  are  forcing  them  away  from  the  prevailing 
individualistic  conceptions  of  the  spiritual  ministry 
to  American  and  world  life,  and  are  compelling  a  re- 
construction which  must  in  the  end  go  deeper  than  is 
now  comprehended.  The  foreign  boards  have  not 
been  so  much  affected  by  events ;  their  individual- 
istic attitudes  and  methods  still  suffice  for  the  satisfac- 
tion of  their  constituencies,  and  the  day  has  not  yet 
[106] 


"THE  CRISIS"  IN  MISSIONARY  METHOD 

come  when  there  is  anything  like  general  recognition 
of  the  inherent  limitations  and  mal-emphases  of  a 
missionary  policy  maintained  as  foreign. 

The  importance  of  the  reconstruction  of  home  mis- 
sionary policy  will  appear  when  it  is  considered  that 
not  only  is  the  social  method  essential  for  the  Church's 
fulfillment  of  its  mission  in  American  society,  but  the 
"home  mission"  method  must  more  and  more  sup- 
ply the  medium  and  measure  of  American  Christian- 
ity's outreach  to  the  world.  Harbingers  of  that  event 
already  appear,  and  analogies  from  other  fields  are 
suggestive.  For  example,  the  influence  of  German 
ideals  upon  the  American  system  of  education  is  uni- 
versally recognized  as  profound.1  This  process  has 
not  been  conducted  through  the  sending  from  Ger- 
many of  propagandists  to  our  American  schools. 
Not  even  Professor  Munsterberg,  Harvard's  brilliant 
and  influential  German  psychologist,  has  either  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously  performed  that  function. 
The  Germauization  of  American  education,  so  far  as 
that  has  been  brought  about,  has  been  effected  by 
Germany's  establishing  in  her  own  universities  such 
high  standards  of  scholarship  and  displaying  such 
conclusive  demonstrations  of  her  educational  ideals, 
that  American  students  for  two  or  three  generations 
have  flocked  to  the  German  schools.  On  their  return 
they,  as  professors  and  other  leaders  in  our  colleges 
and  universities,  have  fulfilled  the  mission. 

To  be  sure,  this  process  has  been  more  or  less  un- 
conscious and  accidental  so  far  as  Germany's  attitude 
is  concerned.     There  is  no   reason,    however,  why 

1  The  idea  set  forth   in  this  and  following  paragraphs  will  be 
found  elaborated  somewhat  more  fully  in  the  preceding  chapter. 
[107] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  PEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

such  a  propaganda  might  not  be  definitely  planned, 
and  prosecuted  scientifically, — as  indeed  is  being  done 
by  Oxford  of  England,  through  the  Rhodes  fellow- 
ships. Cecil  Rhodes  was  a  world  citizen  of  no  mean 
ideas.  It  was  he  who  was  said  to  think  in  continents 
while  other  statesmen  were  concerned  with  village 
gossip.  The  establishment  of  the  Rhodes  fellowships 
at  Oxford  is  quite  the  flower  of  his  consummate 
statesmanship,  if  it  is  granted  that  the  purpose  is 
sufficiently  grand.  The  method  is  remarkably  saga- 
cious. He  conceived  that  the  Oxford  spirit  and  ideals 
were  needed  throughout  the  Anglo-Saxon  world. 
His  method  was  not  to  endow  professorships  in 
foreign  universities  to  be  occupied  by  Englishmen 
trained  in  Oxford,  but  rather  the  founding  of  fellow- 
ships at  Oxford  where  the  coming  moulders  of  society 
in  the  British  colonies  and  the  United  States  might 
themselves  be  moulded  by  the  Oxford  ideals  and 
saturated  with  the  Oxford  spirit  in  their  unimpaired 
and  undiluted  form. 

The  large  influx  of  foreign  students  to  our  univer- 
sities and  other  schools,  and  the  wide  extension 
abroad  of  American  educational  ideals,  are  even  more 
intimately  suggestive  of  what  will  be  the  final  and 
potent  method  of  American  Christian  missions. 
China  has  already  begun  sending  her  annual  quota  of 
officially  appointed  students  to  be  supported  in  our 
universities  and  technical  schools  by  the  Boxer  war 
indemnity  fund  returned  to  her  by  the  United  States. 
The  South  American  Republics  are  sending  us  stu- 
dents in  increasing  numbers.  They  come,  indeed, 
from  everywhere.  The  suggestions  of  a  world  propa- 
ganda conducted  by  the  forces  of  American  Christian- 
[108] 


"THE  CRISIS"  IN  MISSIONARY  METHOD 

ity  through  this  method  and  its  manifold  enlarge- 
ments are  conclusive  for  their  statesmanship  and 
efficiency.  In  consistency  with  their  individualistic 
methods  our  American  foreign  mission  boards  have 
usually  discouraged  the  migration  of  foreign  Christian 
youth  to  our  American  educational  institutions,  and 
when  they  have  been  sent  the  effort  has  been  made  to 
locate  them  iu  the  more  protected  and  church-con- 
trolled schools.  This  policy  has  been  consistent,  but 
it  would  not  seem  the  most  effective  means  of  bring- 
ing to  bear  upon  foreign  society  real  American  Chris- 
tian influence  as  it  is  actually  exerted  in  the  mould- 
ing of  American  society. 

American  Christianity  must  win  or  lose  as  a  mis- 
sionary force  with  American  civilization.  No  degree 
of  emphasis  upon  Christianity  as  a  universal  religion, 
no  attempt  to  detach  American  Christianity  from  its 
own  society  can  controvert  that  essential  spiritual 
law.  Not  only  must  American  Christianity  be  tested 
by  its  achievements  through  its  own  society,  but  its 
world  propaganda  will  find  in  and  through  those 
achievements  the  most  direct  and  the  only  finally 
efficient  methods  of  fulfilling  its  task. 

This  thorough  reconstruction  of  method  will  be  the 
issue  of  the  social  crisis  now  impending.  It  must 
affect  religion  no  less  vitally  than  it  does  American 
industry,  and  economic  and  political  theory.  The 
policies  of  both  the  foreign  and  home  missionary 
boards  of  the  churches  must  be  reconstructed.  The 
whole  missionary  enterprise  must  take  on  the  social 
consciousness,  and  missionary  methods  will  inevitably 
adjust  themselves  to  the  adequate  expression  of  the 
new  attitude  and  ideal. 

[109] 


IX 
WANTED— AN  AMERICAN  CHURCH 

In  the  preceding  chapter  the  statement  was  made 
that  the  foreign  mission  boards  of  the  American 
churches  are  better  organized,  and  administer  the 
interests  assumed  by  them  more  efficiently,  than  do 
the  home  mission  boards  discharge  their  responsi- 
bility. One  of  the  chief  reasons  for  this  state  of  af- 
fairs was  there  also  pointed  out.  The  simple  in- 
dividualistic method  and  ideal  are  still  esteemed 
satisfactory  in  the  case  of  the  foreign  missionary 
propaganda ;  they  are  manifestly  breaking  down 
when  applied  to  the  complicated  spiritual  issues  of 
the  home  missionary  cause.  The  home  mission 
boards  are  in  the  throes  of  readjustment  and  recon- 
struction in  which  ideals  and  methods  even  yet  enter- 
tained must  be  abandoned. 

A  degree  of  cooperation  between  the  foreign  mis- 
sion boards  has  been  maintained  for  fifteen  or  more 
years.  It  is  only  within  three  years  that  organized 
cooperation  between  the  home  mission  boards  has 
been  attempted.  The  rapidity  with  which  this  co- 
operation is  now  advancing  is  one  of  the  happy  signs 
of  the  times.  Already  a  discriminating  observer  who 
has  had  opportunity  to  enter  closely  into  the  councils 
of  each  of  these  bodies  has  declared  that  the  home 
mission  boards  have  outstripped  the  foreign  in  their 
daring.  The  home  mission  boards  are  feeling  keenly 
the  stress  of  the  times  and  are  forced  into  a  unity  of 
[110] 


WANTED— AN  AMERICAN  CHURCH 

effort  and  policy  at  close  quarters,  already  grappling 
with  problems  which  the  foreign  boards  have  found 
it  possible  so  far  to  evade. 

The  unity  of  the  various  denominations  in  their 
missionary  campaigns  abroad  has  long  been  the  boast 
of  the  foreign  propaganda  and  been  turned  into  a 
standing  reproach  to  the  home  church, — as  well  it 
may  be.  But  at  least  a  partial  explanation  of  the 
apparent  anomaly  is  afforded  in  the  situation  just  de- 
fined. The  cooperation  of  foreign  missionary  agencies 
follows  lines  of  comparatively  slight  resistance.  The 
problems  involved  are  easy  and  rub  the  fur  of  human 
nature — at  least  the  fur  of  the  human  nature  im- 
mediately involved  -very  slightly,  when  compared 
with  the  situations  our  complicated  American  social 
life  forces  upon  the  home  mission  boards.  These 
social  problems  must  be  faced  squarely  by  the  latter 
agencies  ;  the  assumed  programme  of  the  former  in- 
volves no  serious  social  embarrassments,  so  far  as  the 
propaganda  at  this  distance  from  the  mission  fields  is 
concerned.  There  are  doubtless  serious  social  prob- 
lems in  Central  Africa,  but  they  do  not  greatly 
tangle  the  relations  of  two  separate  boards  of  foreign 
mission  control  here  in  America.  It  is  easy  enough 
for  me  to  agree  with  my  brother  at  the  head  of  a  mis- 
sion board  in  Atlanta,  Georgia,  in  all  the  essential 
details  of  American  missionary  administration  in  the 
behalf  of  the  Africans  in  Africa.  But  when  I  and 
my  brother  in  Atlanta  sit  down  to  collaborate  in  the 
conduct  of  missionary  work  for  the  negroes  of  Georgia 
and  Alabama,  we  pine  for  so  simple  a  plaything  as 
Pandora's  box,  with  which  we  may  toy  as  a  refresh- 
ing diversion  and  a  gentle  surcease  from  our  toils. 
[Ill] 


WOELD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

The  problems  involved  embody  such  a  tangle  of  tradi- 
tions and  prejudices,  of  overreachings  and  misunder- 
standings, of  hereditary  and  present-day  divergences 
of  policy  and  principle,  that  the  organization  of  an 
expedition  to  Africa  is  the  simplicity  of  simplicity  in 
comparison.  In  short,  my  brother  and  I  are  "up 
against  the  real  thing  "  in  the  way  of  a  social  problem, 
facing  the  certainty  that,  at  least  down  to  the  pres- 
ent moment,  no  matter  how  complete  may  be  our 
personal  and  official  agreement,  neither  can  hope  to 
gain  the  backing  of  his  constituency  for  a  common 
policy. 

This  recent  incident  punctuates  the  contrast :  The 
Laymen's  Missionary  Movement  was  officially  re- 
quested on  three  separate  occasions  by  the  home  mis- 
sion agencies  to  include  the  home  mission  cause  in  the 
purview  of  the  movement.  To  the  lay  mind  this 
seems  not  only  reasonable  but  a  self-evident  demand 
upon  a  movement  claiming  the  general  term  mission- 
ary. And  so  the  matter  appealed  to  many  of  the 
laymen  who  constitute  the  rank  and  file  of  the  Lay- 
men's Movement.  But  the  leaders,  composing  the 
central  committee  in  control,  replied  each  of  the  three 
times  with  firmness,  though  with  courtesy,  to  the 
effect  that  the  vitality  of  the  movement  demanded 
the  maintenance  of  the  policy  at  first  inaugurated,  and 
that  while  the  movement  gladly  affirmed  its  general 
sympathy  with  home  missions  it  could  not  seem 
wise  to  divert  direct  attention  from  the  one  object- 
ive of  foreign  missions.  The  committee  has  been 
much  criticized  by  friends  of  the  home  mission 
cause,  and  by  many  laymen  active  in  the  movement, 
but  their  action  has  at  least  the  grace  of  consistency, 
[112] 


WANTED— AN  AMERICAN  CHURCH 

and  is  a  tribute  to  the  clear  vision  of  their  objective 
on  the  part  of  the  leaders  of  the  movement.  It 
must  be  apparent  to  the  discerning  that  to  attempt 
to  attach  so  distinctively  individualistic  a  programme 
to  the  whirl  of  our  American  spiritual  problems 
would  tend  to  dissipate  its  energy.  The  programme 
of  the  movement,  as  officially  announced,  lays  em- 
phasis upon  the  ''presentation"  of  Christ  to  all  the 
inhabitants  of  the  world.  In  a  general  way  that 
task  has  already  been  fulfilled  in  the  United  States. 
The  missionary  obligation  set  forth  in  individualistic 
terms  means  little  or  nothing  for  home  missions,  and 
the  individualistic  programme  assumed  by  the  for- 
eign mission  agencies  cannot  be  given  consistent  ap- 
plication to  a  spiritual  problem  which  is  one  tangle 
of  social  concerns. 

It  is  manifest  that  unity  and  cooperation  builded 
of  so  fragile  material  as  that  which  holds  our  foreign 
mission  agencies  together  cannot  furnish  the  needed 
vigour  for  the  strenuous  grapple  with  the  spiritual 
problems  the  Church  faces  at  home.  Preachers,  and 
the  orators  before  our  great  ecclesiastical  assem- 
blages, are  accustomed  to  extract  great  satisfaction 
from  the  wide-spread  unity  displayed  in  the  foreign 
propaganda.  The  essential  weakness  of  this  fair 
seeming  must  appear,  however,  whenever  it  is  con- 
sidered that  it  grows  out  of  an  individualistic  pro- 
gramme which  cannot  have  final  value  for  the  strain 
imposed  upon  the  American  Church  at  home,  what- 
ever value  may  be  claimed  for  the  programme  in  the 
outreach  abroad.  The  unity  demanded  for  concerted 
action  among  the  churches  of  the  United  States 
must  be  made  of  different  stuff  to  endure  the  real 
[H3  1 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

strain  of  social  regeneration,  the  grapple  with  our 
severe  social  problems,  without  the  solution  of  which 
there  is  no  American  salvation,  and,  indeed,  apart 
from  which  a  propaganda  reaching  abroad  must  be 
in  the  eud  sapped  of  its  vitality. 

So  much  prepares  the  way  for  the  statement  of  the 
first  of  three  outstanding  needs  of  reconstruction.  To 
succeed  in  the  missionary  enterprise  in  the  United 
States  the  big  energies  of  the  churches  must  be  concen- 
trated upon  the  big  spiritual  issues  of  the  day.  The 
awakening  to  the  demand  for  federation  is  already 
wide  spread,  but,  with  all  of  the  effort  so  far  made, 
the  movement  is  progressing  at  snail's  pace,  when 
reckoning  is  made  of  the  urgent  and  extreme  need. 
The  meeting  of  the  Federal  Council  of  the  Churches 
of  Christ  in  America,  held  in  Philadelphia  in  1908, 
was  a  notable  event.  Publicity  was  given  the  need 
of  federation,  many  eloquent  addresses  were  deliv- 
ered, ringing  resolutions  were  adopted,  imposing 
committees  were  appointed, — all  of  which  is  gain. 
But  adequate  power  is  still  lacking.  The  Amer- 
ican churches  are  to-day  in  a  position  analogous  to 
that  of  the  American  colonies  at  about  1776.  The 
various  dissociated  integers — there  are  unfortunately 
many  more  than  thirteen  in  this  case — are  conscious 
of  profound  common  interests.  The  fulfillment  of 
their  mission,  if  not  indeed  their  very  existence, 
makes  some  real  "  getting  together"  imperative. 
But  they  are  mutually  fearful  of  the  issue,  are  mor- 
bidly cautious,  easily  take  fright  at  the  suggestion 
of  the  mutual  surrender  of  independence  and  prerog- 
ative, would  gladly  see  a  central  unifying  agency 
established  but  will  not  hear  to  clothing  it  with  au- 
[114] 


WANTED— AN  AMEKICAN  CHUECH 

thority.  Thus  far  lt  federation "  movements  have 
accordingly  limited  central  agencies  to  "  purely  ad- 
visory "  functions.  After  1776  the  American  col- 
onies were  forced  into  a  real  federation  by  more  than 
a  decade  of  exceedingly  stressful  experiences.  Anal- 
ogously, stressful  experiences  will  not  fail  the  Amer- 
ican churches,  if  they  insist  upon  awaiting  them. 
They  bid  fair  to  come  thick  and  fast.  But  it  is 
hoped  that  more  prompt  aud  clear- visioned  response 
to  the  demands  of  the  situation  may  be  vouchsafed 
in  this  case.  Real  movement  towards  the  end  can- 
not well  be  too  rapid.  Since  the  churches  are  at 
least  a  century  and  a  third  behiud  the  staudards  of 
American  political  theory,  a  degree  of  speed  none 
can  consider  intemperate. 

Certain  embarrassments  inhere  in  the  nominal  pol- 
ity of  many  of  our  American  churches,  aud  in  the 
actual  usage  of  others.  Within  the  given  denomi- 
nation itself  there  sometimes  is  no  nominal  central 
authority.  In  one  notable  instance  recently  a  mis- 
sionary board  of  one  of  the  largest  denominations  was 
compelled  to  withdraw  even  from  the  loose,  "  purely 
advisory"  association  of  one  of  the  federation  coun- 
cils, because  it  cannot  claim  authority  from  its  de- 
nomination even  for  such  an  alliance.  Such  in- 
stances strikingly  illustrate  the  need  of  the  social  ideal 
and  method  in  the  very  mechanism  of  the  churches 
themselves.  There  is  a  sort  of  injustice  in  the  wide- 
spread criticisms  now  so  common  among  those  who 
would  have  the  denominations  consolidate.  There 
is  often  not  sufficient  coherence  within  the  denomi- 
nation itself  to  permit  anything  like  consolidation 
with  another  body.  The  spirit  is  usually  willing, 
[115] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

but  the  clothing  of  flesh  is  sometimes  so  delicate  as 
to  leave  the  spirit  powerless. 

The  promising  fact  is  that  among  all  the  denomi- 
nations the  more  substantial  centralization  of  power 
is  forming  in  the  missionary  boards.  This  move- 
ment should  be  given  freer  scope  still,  and  then  there 
should  be  guarantee  of  such  strict  control  of  these 
agencies  as  that  they  will  genuinely  represent  the 
progressive  life  of  the  churches.  This  development 
is  already  being  retarded  because  there  is  among  some 
of  the  denominations  distrust  of  their  own  missionary 
agencies.  They  are  inclined  to  slip  away  from  the 
control  of  the  churches  which  created  them  and 
which  they  nominally  represent.  The  centralization 
of  authority  is  thus  feared,  and  of  course  the  larger 
federation  movements  between  the  denominations  go 
powerless.  This  timidity  will  ere  long  be  overcome. 
The  threatened  existence  of  the  churches  will  finally 
banish  the  unwarranted  fear,  if  reason  and  Christian 
common  sense  do  not  suffice.  All  the  churches  are 
dissipating  energy  at  a  frightful  rate,  and  all  are 
more  or  less  frightened.  It  must  be  confessed,  how- 
ever, that  the  fright  has  not  yet  anywhere  reached 
the  degree  required  to  effect  the  necessary  adminis- 
trative adjustments. 

The  second  need  I  mention  is  correlative  with  the 
first.  There  must  be  a  more  definite  fixing  and  ac- 
ceptance of  local  responsibility  for  local  conditions. 
There  is  vast  need  of  the  centralization  of  authority, 
within  the  range  of  functions  where  centralization  is 
effective.  On  the  other  hand,  there  is  almost  as  great 
a  need  for  the  recognition  of  the  limitations  of  cen- 
tralized activity.  It  has  come  about  here  and  there 
[116] 


WANTED— AN  AMERICAN  CHURCH 

that  a  national  mission  board  five  hundred  or  two 
thousand  miles  distant  has  been  charged  with  a  more 
intimate  responsibility  for  the  spiritual  welfare  of  a 
given  community  than  was  felt  by  the  strong  church 
of  the  same  denomination  within  ten  city  blocks  of 
the  needy  field.  There  has  been  improvement  in  this 
regard.  Fewer  churches  are  conducting  the  home 
mission  work  at  their  own  door-steps  by  hiring  it 
done  through  a  central  agency  operating  at  long 
range.  The  home  mission  work  of  the  next  block 
prosecuted  as  a  foreign  missionary  enterprise  is  al- 
most the  limit  of  missionary  ineptitude.  The  feeling 
of  local  responsibility  has  been  vastly  increasing  of 
late. 

It  is  marked  in  the  cities.  In  many  the  federation 
movement  has  taken  hold,  and  naturally  has  begun 
to  manifest  more  real  power  there  than  where  the 
problems  are  less  uniform  and  concrete.  The  effort 
is  so  far  disappointing  in  the  cities  of  first  magnitude, 
apparently  because  statesmen  of  large  enough  caliber 
are  not  forthcoming  to  initiate  and  direct  the  move- 
ment. The  conspicuous  effort  of  the  federated  lay- 
men of  Chicago  would  be  of  more  value  if  it  were 
more  wholesomely  social  and  constructive. 

Among  the  states  there  is  great  promise.  Vermont 
churches  maintain  a  federation  which  is  not  alone  a 
restraining,  inhibiting  force,  but  is  positive  and  con- 
structive. Indiana  churches  are  in  the  process  of 
federation.  The  movement  in  Colorado  has  made  a 
distinct  contribution  to  church  method.  The  accu- 
rate survey  of  the  state,  and  the  definite  fixing  of  re- 
sponsibility upon  the  several  denominations  are 
among  the  features. 

[117] 


WOELD  MISSIONS  FEOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

Only  recently  indeed  has  the  first  element  of  con- 
structive statesmanship  appeared.  For  years  there 
has  been  much  talk  of  comity  among  the  churches. 
The  aim  was  purely  negative,  and  was  good,  doubt- 
less, so  far  as  it  went.  It  tended  to  check  duplica- 
tion and  overlapping.  But  there  is  little  promise  in 
so  distinctively  an  inhibitive  process.  Now  the  fed- 
eration movement  in  several  states  has  presumed  not 
alone  to  prescribe  what  not  to  do,  but  to  direct  the 
churches  in  positive  achievements. 

But  the  fixing  of  local  responsibility  must  em- 
brace larger  integers  even  than  states.  In  at  least 
one  denomination  there  is  discussion  of  what,  for  the 
lack  of  a  better  term,  may  be  styled  provincial  asso- 
ciations. Such  an  order  would,  for  example,  greatly 
simplify  the  Church's  outreach  upon  the  problem  of 
negro  evangelization  in  the  South.  There  are  now 
two  separate  and  distinct  denominations  among  the 
Baptists,  one  Northern  and  the  other  Southern. 
Substantially  the  same  conditions  prevail  among  the 
Methodists  and  the  Presbyterians.  When  each  of 
these  six  bodies,  not  to  speak  of  others,  with  their 
varying  and  even  antagonistic  ideals,  push  operations 
in  the  territory  of  the  former  slaveholding  states, 
there  is  produced  a  merry  mess  whose  humour  does 
not  inure  to  the  higher  spiritual  welfare  of  the  ex- 
slave  population,  nor  to  the  healthy  development  of 
the  kingdom  of  God  as  a  whole.  It  is  certainly  time 
that  the  responsibility  for  missionary  work  among 
the  negroes  of  the  South  were  more  unequivocally 
committed  to  the  churches  of  the  South.  The  North- 
ern churches  gained  much  warrant  for  aggressive  ef- 
fort among  the  negroes  there  while  the  South  was  im- 
[118] 


WANTED— AN  AMERICAN  CHURCH 

poverished  and  the  Southern  churches  were  in- 
capacitated financially,  and  perhaps  also  to  some 
degree  spiritually,  for  the  huge  task.  But  the  finan- 
cial warrant  no  longer  exists.  The  South  is  able  to 
do  this  work.  At  any  rate,  outside  assistance  should 
reasonably  be  made  in  supplement  of  what  the 
Southern  churches  are  doing  and  in  conformance  with 
the  policies  they  maintain.  Continued  interference, 
with  conflicting  policies,  can  only  be  construed  by  the 
Southern  churches  as  distrust  of  their  motives  and 
spiritual  capacity  for  mission  work  among  their 
negro  fellow  citizens.  Perhaps  such  distrust  is  felt  in 
some  quarters,  but  its  display  certainly  does  not  make 
for  Christian  unity  and  good  fellowship,  while  per- 
sistence in  antagonistic  policies  between  the  Northern 
and  Southern  churches  offers  even  less  promise  of 
success  in  the  future  than  has  distinguished  the  past. 
The  Northern  churches  owe  it  to  themselves  and  the 
cause  to  commit  this  responsibility  to  the  Southern 
churches,  and  the  Southern  churches  have  a  similar 
obligation  to  accept  it.  The  barrier  of  this  difficult 
situation  removed,  there  would  be  more  hope  of 
unifying  each  of  the  three  or  four  large  denomina- 
tions now  split  in  two  by  the  old  Mason's  and 
Dixon's  line.  In  which  event  clarified  public  opin- 
ion throughout  the  churches,  both  North  and  South, 
could  be  brought  wholesomely  to  bear.  If  there 
should  be  continued  neglect,  it  would  be  perfectly 
evident  who  deserves  the  censure.  The  quickened 
conscience  of  the  churches  of  the  South  would  thus 
rise  to  the  occasion  unhampered  by  the  annoying 
conflict  in  present  policies.  A  large  share  of  the  de- 
plorable spiritual  condition  among  the  negroes  of  the 
[119] 


WORLD  MISSIONS  FliOM  THE  HOME  BASE 

South  may  now  be  justly  laid  to  the  charge  of  the 
Northern  churches,  because  they  persist  in  the  direct 
assumption  of  the  responsibility.  Forty-five  years 
of  experiment  and  the  present  conditions  may  reason- 
ably suggest  that  some  change  of  policy  would  be 
wholesome. 

A  third  generic  need  in  the  administration  of  the 
American  churches  affects  the  personnel  and  func- 
tions of  the  executives  of  the  administrative  agencies. 
More  than  once  such  recommendations  as  the  follow- 
ing have  been  employed  in  proposing  persons  for 
executive  positions  :  This  brother  has  grown  old  in  the 
service  of  the  Church  ;  he  has  been  the  faithful  pastor 
of  this,  that  and  the  other  influential  congregation  ; 
he  has  always  been  loyal  to  the  glorious  history  and 
doctrines  of  the  denomination :  after  his  lifelong 
service  the  Church  owes  him  this  honour.  That  is  to 
say,  an  office  whose  duties  under  modern  conditions 
call  for  such  energy,  resourcefulness  and  vision  as  all 
but  surpass  the  power  of  mortal  man,  is  conceived  as 
a  pension  for  an  all  but  superannuated  individual. 
The  Church  is  much  criticized  for  what  some  are 
pleased  to  call  its  politics.  There  is  much  of  this  and 
similar  "  politics"  in  the  churches  ;  there  is  little  of 
graft.  Church  politics  flow  with  the  milk  of  human 
kiudness,  and  full  credit  should  be  given  them  for 
that  quality.  But  undoubtedly  strong  meat  is  de- 
manded to  equip  her  for  the  stressful  ordeals  of  to- 
day. Administrative  positions  in  the  churches  have 
too  often  been  conceived  as  mere  clerkships,  and 
initiative  and  energy  have  not  been  sought  in  the  in- 
cumbents. The  most  inconsequential  considerations 
have  often  determined  the  choice  :  theological  ortho- 
[120] 


WANTED— AN  AMERICAN  CHURCH 

doxy,  old  age,  inability  to  maintain  a  charge  in  the 
pastorate,  ability  for  forceful  public  speaking  unac- 
companied by  executive  genius,  or  general  intellectual 
power  with  no  particular  concern  for  specific  qualities. 

Tendencies  are,  however,  on  the  whole  encouraging. 
There  is  wider  recognition  of  the  fact  that  as  a  rule 
efficiency  can  best  be  gained  by  bringing  executive 
officers  up  "through  the  ranks,"  and  especially  is 
there  a  general  desire  to  avail  of  the  vigour  and  in- 
tellectual flexibility  of  youth. 

But  most  notable  of  all  perhaps  is  the  increasing 
recognition  of  the  expert  in  executive  office.  One  of 
the  major  boards,  for  example,  has  as  many  as  seven 
specialists  included  in  its  departmental  executive 
staff.  This  affords  promise  of  initiative  such  as  has 
never  been  known  in  missionary  administration. 
The  missionary  board  is  thus  removed  from  the  class 
of  tape-bound  bureaucracies,  and  is  given  a  vivacity 
and  adaptation  which  promise  worthy  achievements. 
The  specialist  is  a  dangerous  factor  when  uncon- 
trolled. He  is  likely  to  fill  the  horizon  with  his 
specialty,  but  the  cure  of  the  evils  of  specialty  is  more 
specialization,  and  a  well-organized  corps  of  experts, 
covering  with  their  activities  all  phases  of  the  modern 
board's  complicated  task,  is  the  surest  guarantee  of 
efficiency. 

A  serious  embarrassment  of  all  the  boards,  how- 
ever, is  the  jealousy  of  "administration  expenses" 
manifested  by  their  constituent  churches.  The  dan- 
ger of  excess  is  real  and  needs  to  be  carefully  guarded 
against ;  it  is  easily  possible  to  use  up  too  much 
energy  in  merely  keeping  the  wheels  of  machinery 
revolving,  leaving  too  little  for  the  actual  delivery  of 
[121] 


WOELD  MISSIONS  FROM  THE  HOME  BASE 

product  from  the  machine.  But  on  the  other  hand 
not  one  of  the  denominations  has  yet  come  to  realize 
how  complete  must  be  the  reconstruction  of  its  mis- 
sionary agencies  before  real  efficiency  can  be  secured. 
The  new  social  method  and  ideal  lay  the  emphasis 
here  more  strongly  than  upon  any  other  point.  The 
enormous  local  energies  of  the  churches  now  lie  stag- 
nated at  countless  centres  for  the  lack  of  expert  in- 
spiration and  supervision.  Outside  money  poured 
into  stagnated  missionary  fields  in  the  form  of  sub- 
sidies is  the  very  limit  of  missionary  ineptitude.  Yet 
that  is  the  method  for  which  so  many  well-meaning 
persons  clamour  when  they  vehemently  demand  that 
their  contributions  to  the  cause  shall  go  directly  into 
the  work  on  the  field,  and  not  be  "  absorbed  in  the 
fancy  salaries  of  high-priced  board  officials."  It  is 
precisely  the  lack  of  "  high-priced  "  inspiration  and 
supervision  which  is  to-day  costing  the  churches 
large  sums  of  money  for  returns  distressingly  meagre 
in  quantity  and  even  less  satisfying  in  quality. 

An  intelligent  public  opinion  is  vastly  needed. 
Church  missionary  agencies  are  conceived  too  much 
apart.  For  many  they  are  mainly  serviceable  for 
purposes  of  criticism,  and  the  consciousness  does  not 
dawn  upon  the  critic  that  inefficiency  in  their  control 
is  an  immediate  reflection  upon  himself  and  his 
churchmauship.  They  are  his  agencies  and  their 
efficiency  is  in  direct  proportion  to  the  intelligence 
and  strictness  with  which  he  holds  them  to  account. 
An  intelligent  public  conscience  will  effectively  back 
up  the  progressive  administration  now  operating  and 
will  bring  to  bear  a  pressure  not  to  be  complacently 
endured  upon  the  other  sort. 
[122] 


WANTED— AN  AMERICAN  CHURCH 

In  fine  we  need  an  American  Church,  or,  if  the  in- 
dependents are  inclined  to  feel  that  capital  C  smells 
too  strong  of  hierarchy,  the  concession  may  be  made 
to  churches,  which  will  weave  themselves  into  the 
very  warp  and  woof  of  American  society.  That,  or 
these,  we  have  not  now  got.  All  the  larger  denomina- 
tions in  America,  with  one  apparent  exception,  are 
importations  from  Europe.  The  same  is  even  more 
definitely  true  of  almost  all  of  the  smaller  churches, 
also.  Our  civil  institutions  are  a  genuine  American 
product ;  they  were  conceived  of  American  brains, 
and  were  moulded  in  close  adaptation  to  specific 
American  needs.  Our  churches  hark  back  to  worthy 
founders  who  never  saw  America,  and  some  of  whom 
never  dreamed  of  American  social  conditions,  even 
those  of  primitive  times,  not  to  speak  of  the  vitally 
new  problems  of  to-day.  American  churches  spring 
from  Rome,  or  Geneva,  or  London,  or  Heidelberg,  or 

the  Wartburg,  or  Edinburgh,  or  some  other burg, 

big  or  little,  here  or  there,  in  Europe  ;  and  their  re- 
mote and  alien  maternity  is  to  this  day  the  undis- 
criminating  boast  of  our  periodic  ecclesiastical  anni- 
versary occasions.  This  is  no  way  to  reach  the 
intimate  spiritual  needs  of  our  modern  American  so- 
ciety. Each  of  our  churches  is  shackled  with  forms 
and  traditions  which  can  only  prove  a  bondage  to  ac- 
cepted American  ideals.  It  is  inevitable  that  the 
mission  of  the  churches  in  our  society  should  prove 
inadequate,  and  indeed  false,  in  the  degree  that  their 
ideals  and  methods  are  artificial.  By  the  same  token, 
the  impact  of  American  Christianity  upon  the  rest  of 
the  world  must  in  so  far  prove  insincere  and  lacking 
in  genuine  spiritual  force. 

[123] 


TRAVEL,  MISSIONARY 


JULIUS  RICHTER 

The  History  of  Protestant  Missions 
in  India      8vo,  cioth,  net  $2.50. 

Dr.  Harlan  P.  Beach  says:  "The  editor  of  Die  Evangel- 
ischen  Missionen  has  long  been  known  as  a  chief  authority 
on  missions,  while  his  two  volumes,  one  on  North  and  the 
other  on  South  India,  have  made  him  an  Indian  specialist  of 
the  highest  order.  Dr.  Richter's  third  volume  on  that  Em- 
pire is  by  far  the  most  important  contribution  to  the  history 
of  Indian  missions  that  has  ever  been  published." 

SAMUEL   MERWIN 


Drugging  a  Nation 


The  Story  of  the  Influence  of  Opium  on  the  Chinese  Nation. 

i.'mo,  cloth,   net  $1.00. 

"The  first  real  story  of  the  opium  curse  of  China._  During 
its  preparation  the  author  travelled  around  the  world  inquiring 
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able on  the  subject  Mr.  Merwin's  book  is  one  that  will  be 
studied  by  all  who  have  the  interests  of  China  at  heart." 
— Portland  Evening  Telegram. 

HORACE  N.  ALLEN,  M.D. 

Things  Korean 

i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.25. 

"If  you  want  some  hours  of  delightful  amusement,  in 
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try and  its  people,  you  will  buy  the  book.  The  book  is  epi- 
sodical, anecdotal  and  affords  just  that  discursive  and  pleasant 
reading  which  everybody  likes." — Toledo  Blade. 


MISCELLANEOUS 


HORACE  C.   STANTON 

The  Starry  Universe  the  Christian's 
Future  Empire   izmo,  cioth.net  $1.25. 

A  study  of  what  inspiration  reveals  about  the  transcendent 
physical  powers,  privileges  and  possibilities  of  the  coming 
life.  All  the  methods  of  the  future  life  are  little  more  than 
sketched  in  divine  revelation.  This  author  attempts  to  fill 
in  the  hopes  of  the  human  heart.  His  work  is  rational  and 
reasonable  and  the  work  is  one  that  will  bring  comfort  to 
those  whose  thoughts  are  especially  turned  this  way  by  reason 
of  bereavement.  The  author  is  a  successful  pastor  and  writes 
to  the  needs  of  the  human  heart  as  he  knows  it 


TRAVEL,  MISSIONARY 


JOHN  W.  ARCTANDER 

The  Apostle  of  Alaska 

lhe  Story  of  William   Duncan   op  Metlakahtxa.     Illus- 
trated, i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.50. 

_  A  record  of  the  phenomenal  life-work  and  thrilling  ex- 
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story  of  the  reformation  in  the  Indian  character  and  its  di- 
version to  useful,  practical  pursuits  as  Duncan  tells  of  how  he 
originated  industrial  enterprises,  such  as  boat-building,  saw- 
milling,  and  established  a  large  and  lucrative  salmon  cannery, 
acting  all  the  while  as  instructor  and  overseer,  besides  being 
school-master,  preacher  and  pastor.  It  reads  like  a  romance 
as  it  narrates  the  wonderful  story  of  his  missionary  work  and 
industrial  labors  among  his  loved  chosen  people. 


GERALDINE  GUINNESS 

Peru:  Its  Story,  People  and  Religion 

Illustrated,  8vo,  cloth,  net  $2.50. 

Miss  Guinness,  from  an  extended  tour  of  Peru,  has  pre- 

fiared  a  wonderful  volume  of  description.  She  pictures  a 
and  of  great  extremes  of  climate;  gardens  flourishing  at 
altitudes  higher  than  Mt.  Blanc  and  deserts  at  the  sea  side, 
and  a  people  sadly  in  need  of  the  touch  of  Christian  civiliza- 
tion. The  author  s  father,  H.  Grattan  Guinness,  has  provided 
for  the  book  45  illustrations,  photographs,  maps,  photograv- 
ures. 

G.  Campbell  Morgan  says:  "From  whatever  standpoint  I 
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in  praise  of  it.  Its  literary  style  is  full  of  charm,  and  withal 
full  of  life.    Its  grouping  of  facts  is  superbly  done." 


MANUEL  AND U JAR 

Spain  of  To-day  from  Within 

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net  $1.25. 

An  instructive,  interesting  narrative  of  a  native  of  Spain, 
who  knows  his  country  well.  He  was  brought  up  a  Catholic, 
and  later  on  embracing  the  Protestant  religion,  he  became  a 
minister  of  the  Gospel.  The  stories  of  his  travels  in  Spain 
will  be  found  entertaining  as  well  as  instructive  reading,  as 
will  be  his  glad  narrative  of  the  progress  of  evangelical  work 
in  that  priest-ridden  nation.  The  book  is  delightfully  illus- 
trated, and  will  be  sure  to  be  widely  and  eagerly  read. 


TRAVEL,  MISSIONARY 


H.   G.    UNDERWOOD 

The  Call  of  Korea 

New  Popular  Edition.  Paper,  net  35c.  Regular  Edition, 
i2mo,  cloth,  net  75c. 
"As  attractive  as  a  novel — packed  with  information.  Dr. 
Underwood  knows  Korea,  its  territory,  its  people,  and  its 
needs,  and  his  book  has  special  value  which  attaches  to  expert 
judgment.  Particularly  well  suited  to  serve  as  a  guide  to 
young  people  in  the  study  of  missions." — Examiner. 

WILLIAM  O.  CARVER 

Missions  in  the  Plan  of  the  Ages 

Bible  Studies  and  Missions.     i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.25. 

As  Professor  of  Comparative  Religion  and  Missions  ia 
the  Southern  Baptist  Theological  Seminary  at  Louisville,  Dr. 
Carver  has  prepared  in  these  chapters  the  fruit  of  many 
years'  study.  His  aim  is  to  show  that  the  foundation  prin- 
ciples of  the  Christian  task  of  world  conquest  are  found  in 
the  Bible  not  so  much  in  the  guise  of  a  commanded  duty  aa 
in  the  very  life  of  the  Christian  faith. 

ANNIE  L.   A.   BAIRD 

Daybreak  in  Korea 

Illustrated,  i6mo,  cloth,  net  60c. 

There  can  never  be  too  many  missionary  books  like  this. 
A  story  written  with  literary  skill,  the  story  of  a  girl's  life 
in  Korea,  her  unhappy  marriage  and  how  the  old,  old  story 
transformed  her  home.  It  reads  like  a  novel  and  most  of  all 
teaches  one,  on  every  page,  just  what  the  Gospel  means  to 
the  far  eastern  homes. 

ISABELLA   RIGGS  WILLIAMS 


By  the  Great  Wall 


Selected    Correspondence    of    Isabella    Riggs    Williams,    Mis- 
sionary   of    the    American    Board    to    China,     1 866-1 897. 
With  an  introduction  by  Arthur  H.   Smith.     Illustrated, 
i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.50. 
"This  volume  is  a  little  window  opened  into   the  life   and 
work    of    an    exceptionally    equipped    missionary.     It    was    at 
Kalgan,    the    northern    gateway    of    China,    that    a    misssion 
station    was    begun    amid    a    people    hard    and   unimpressible. 
It  was  here  that  Mrs.   Williams  won  the  hearts  of   Chinese 
women   and   girls;    here    that    she   showed    what    a    Christian 
home  may  be,  and  how  the  children  of  such  a  home  can  be 
trained  for  wide  and  unselfish  usefulness   wherever  their  lot 
is  cast.     No  object-lesson  is  more  needed  in  the  Celestial   Empire 
than  this.      Many   glimpses  of   that  patient  and  tireless  mis- 
sionary activity  which  makes  itself  all  things  to  all  men  are 
given/' — Arthur  H.  Smith,  Author  of  Chinese  Characteristics, 
Etc. 


MISSIONARY 


ROBERT  E.  SPEER 

Christianity  and  the  Nations 

The   Duff   Lectures   for    1910. 
8vo,  cloth,  net    <2.00. 

Among  the  many  notable  volumes  that  have  resulted 
from  the  well-known  Duff  foundation  Lectureship  this  new 
work  embodving  the  series  given  by  Mr.  Robert  E.  Speer 
in  Edinburgh,  Glasgow  and  Aberdeen,  will  rawk  among  the 
most  important.  The  general  theme,  "The  Rt/lex  Influence 
of  Missions  upon  the  Nations,"  suggests  a  large,  important, 
and  most  interesting  work.  The  name  of  the  lecturer  is 
sufficient  guarantee  of  the  method  of  treatment. 

HENRY  H.  JESS  UP 

Fifty -three  Years  in  Syria 

Introduction  by  James  S.  Dennis.     1'wo  volumes,  illustrated, 

8vo,  cloth,  boxed,  net  $5.00. 

This  autobiographical  record  of  half  a  century's  experi- 
ence in  the  mission  field  of  Syria,  is  rich  in  color,  narra- 
tive and  insight.  It  is  also  incidentally  a  history  of  the 
mission  work  for  the  period  but  told  with  a  personal  touch 
and  from  the  innermost  standpoint.  It  is  a  pioneer's  story, 
and  as  such  never  lacks  in  interest. 

JULIUS  RICHTER 

A  History  of  Protestant  Missions  in  the 
Near  East  8v°»  doth,  net  $2.50. 

A  companion  volume  to  "A  History  of  Missions  in 
India"  by  this  great  authority.  The  progress  of  the  gospel 
is  traced  in  Asia  Minor,  Persia,  Arabia,  Syria  and  Egypt. 
Non-sectarian  in  spirit  and  thoroughly  comprehensive  in 
scope.  "It  is  truly  a  notable  work  and  can  be  endorsed 
in  unqualified  terms. — John  R.  Mott. 

WILLIAM  EDWARD  GARDNER 


Winners  of  the  World  During  Twenty 

CentUrieS    Adapted  for  Boys  and  Girls. 

A  Story  and  a  Study  of  Missionary  Effort  from  the  Time  of 
Paul  to  the  Present  Day.  Cloth,  net  6oc;  paper,  net  30c. 
Brief  sketches  of  great  missionaries  in  chronological 
order,  extending  down  through  Augustine  and  Boniface 
the  apostles  to  England  and  Germany,  Xavier  in  Japan,  and 
Brainerd  among  the_  Indians,  to  Carey,  Moffat  and  Living- 
stone and  Missionaries  of  our  own  day.  Intensely  stimulat- 
ing and  suggestive. 


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